The Prosecutor's Office defends the thesis of the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont in the face of the decision of the Sala de Vacances of the Constitutional Court to reject an appeal brought by the pro-independence leader so that the court of guarantees reviewed a national arrest warrant agreed by the Supreme Court
The Sala de Vacances of the Constitucional agreed in the middle of August, with the support of two magistrates from the conservative sector and a particular vote against a magistrate from the progressive wing, to reject the admission of Puigdemont's appeal against the 'national arrest warrant issued by the High Court after confirming his prosecution for aggravated embezzlement and disobedience in the cause of the process, once the crime of sedition was repealed. The public ministry considers that this matter should not have been resolved by the Sala de Vacances on August 9, since it is more incompetent and is not considered an urgent matter to convene this room.
The chief prosecutor of the TC, Pedro Crespo, clarifies that he has appealed against the decision, in line with the thesis of the former Catalan president, because of the "transcendental importance that the inadmissibility, if it occurs, is agreed by the competent body". In his opinion, this is the "constitutional essence".
Despite this, he states that it is "certainly possible" that in the end the protection appeal filed by Puigdemont and former councilor Toni Comín - both MEPs considered as fugitives from justice - "may end up being rejected, or even inadmissible, and it is also that this Prosecutor's Office does not oppose it".
Despite everything, he considers that the court did not accept the "true tenor" of the agreement to convene the Sala de Vacances and was "devoid of its logical, systematic and teleological context". He understands that assuming this argument of competence, "if generalized as a doctrinal criterion, would produce application consequences that are hardly compatible with the same institutional and constitutional configuration of the court".
"Access through the formal conduct of the precautionary procedure to a (exclusively) substantive decision actually constitutes a distortion of the merely instrumental nature that, in an urgent context, corresponds to the judgment of admission of the appeal, the need which - to which the interlocutory alludes - can only be justified in accordance with the rule in consideration of this precautionary purpose", he adds.
