The Administrative Litigation Chamber of the Supreme Court has refused to enter into the merits of the appeals against the pardons granted to the leaders of the process due to the lack of legitimacy of the Vox and Ciudadanos formations to present them.
The magistrates met this Thursday to study whether Pedro Sánchez's Executive acted under the law by granting the measure of grace under the argument of recovering social peace in Catalonia.
The Chamber has studied three appeals presented by Vox and three others by former autonomous deputies of Ciudadanos - among them that of the former leader of the formation Inés Arrimadas - against the partial pardons granted by the Government to those convicted in the case of the Jordi Sánchez and Jordi procés Cuxart. These are the first resources to be studied of almost thirty that are still pending. However, this first resolution will be the one that marks the path for the rest. The appeals of the PP and other private citizens are pending.
In the case of the two appeals presented by Vox, the Chamber has unanimously inadmissed them. In the case of the former Cs parliamentarians, the decision was by majority. No magistrate has announced a private vote.
The Supreme Court has taken two years to resolve this matter. Initially the Chamber rejected that it could be admitted for processing because the appellants – among them the PP, Vox and Ciudadanos – did not have a legitimate interest. A change in the court made it possible to consider an appeal for annulment, which allowed the judges to change their own criteria and study the merits.
After deciding to admit it for processing, the magistrates today entered into the substance of the issue as to whether those who have appealed the pardon measure have a legitimate interest in doing so. The objective of this appeal was to assess whether the proposal of the Minister of Justice at that time, Juan Carlos Campo – currently a magistrate of the Constitutional Court –, later approved by the Council of Ministers, was adequately argued.
Although it is a measure of grace, if it is granted, an explanation must be given as to why the prison sentence is being withdrawn from a convicted person. However, by rejecting legitimation, the content of the pardons is no longer evaluated.
