The pact between PSOE and Junts to invest Pedro Sánchez as president of the Spanish Government has generated a wave of indignation in the judicial race, after the socialists have accepted in the agreement the term lawfare, used by pro-independence parties to talk about judicial persecution of leaders responsible for the process.
In the agreement, signed on Thursday by the two parties, it is established that the "conclusions of the investigative commissions that will be set up in the next legislature will take into account the application of the amnesty law to the extent that they could arise situations included in the concept of lawfare or judicialization of politics, with the consequences that may give rise to actions of responsibility or legislative modifications".
Legal sources say that the pro-independence parties want to call into question the investigations into the former president of the Parliament Laura Borràs, convicted of breaching contracts when she was director of the Institution of Catalan Letters, or the lawyer of Carles Puigdemont, Gonzalo Boye, prosecuted for allegedly having laundered close to a million euros for the organization of the drug trafficker Sito Miñanco, among others.
Since the pact between the parties became known, there has been a trickle of statements from all levels of the judicial career that have raised their voices because of the "seriousness" of the agreement and the attempt to investigate judges through commissions in Congress.
Socialist sources have qualified the terms of the agreement, although it has not prevented the chain reaction of all judicial associations, both conservative and progressive, the General Council of the Judicial Power (CGPJ), deans and provincial hearings throughout Spain.
These sources clarify that the agreement is not aimed at creating commissions of investigation with the aim of detecting cases of lawfare, but refers to commissions already created, such as those of Operation Catalunya or illegal eavesdropping through of Pegasus, and aims to "reinforce the rule of law". However, sources in the judicial career claim that with this agreement the ban on trying to point out judges as fraudsters is opened.
These same sources insist that the Parliament will not prosecute the judges or review sentences already handed down. "This is not what has been agreed nor could it have been agreed", they say.
For weeks, the tension in the judiciary after learning of the negotiating plan to approve the amnesty law has been increasing. However, only the conservative association and the conservative bloc of the CGPJ had dared to step forward to criticize a law that had not yet been introduced.
The rest had chosen to wait to learn the details of the proposal. However, after learning of the pact between PSOE and Junts, they have been uniting from all segments of the judicial race against the pact in which there is talk of judicial persecution of the leaders of the process. The first to react were the judicial associations, and from there the public warnings have been staggered.
The associations of judges have been joined by the Association of Prosecutors, who have agreed to show their concern for the mention of "lawfare or judicialization of politics" and its consequences. A concern to which the permanent commission of the governing body of judges was added. This statement was also joined by almost 80 deans, including those from Barcelona, Lleida and Girona.
After these were the presidents of the provincial hearings in Spain who wanted to leave black on white in a statement their "strongest rejection" of the reference to lawfare and the judicialization of politics.
As the associations warn, the text of the agreement "could mean, in practice, subjecting judicial procedures and decisions to parliamentary review with obvious interference in judicial independence and failure of the separation of powers".
For the CGPJ, the mention of the judicialization of politics "implies potentially subjecting to parliamentary review decisions framed in the exclusivity of the jurisdiction of our courts which, on the other hand, we understand were taken in a fully in accordance with the then-judged legality"
