Yesterday, the plenum of the Constitutional Court (TC) unanimously suspended the agreement of the Parliament Bureau of February 20, 2024 that admitted to the procedure the popular legislative initiative (ILP) called "Proposal of Law for the declaration of the independence of Catalonia" ”, presented by the extra-parliamentary formation Catalan Solidarity for Independence.
The high court thus gave course to the challenge promoted by the Central Government, which also requested the suspension of this agreement. In these cases, the Constitutional Court leaves suspended what is contested automatically, because the appeal comes from the Central Executive.
Now the Catalan Chamber has a deadline of twenty days to present to the Constitutional Court "all the documents and allegations it considers appropriate" and the resolution will be notified to the president of the institution, Anna Erra.
The magistrates, according to sources from the body, met for an hour and a half, and despite the fact that the resolution admitting the Executive's appeal, of which Magistrate Enrique Arnaldo is the speaker, was unanimous, the reasons for this were not they were the same
The Solidarity legislative initiative, which is based on a law that this party presented to Parliament when it was represented there in 2011, has been suspended since March 27, when the central government raised the appeal.
The ILP passed the first cut at the Parliament Table thanks to the favorable votes of Junts per Catalunya and the CUP together with the abstention of Esquerra Republicana and the opposing vote of the PSC, all this in full negotiations on the proposed law Amnesty, finally approved by the Congress of Deputies on March 14.
The proposal had, however, a non-binding report from the lawyers of the Parliament, which in any case warned that the text could exceed its competences, since the ILPs must be on matters in which the Autonomous Administration has competences. The lawyer's mandatory report stated that the initiative "does not meet the conditions" required by the law that regulates popular legislative initiatives.
In view of these circumstances, and being aware that the ILP could be the subject of judicial appeals, the three magistrates of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia who were part of the control commission of these initiatives submitted their resignations, so that neither the process of collecting signatures had only begun, which lasts half a year, for the law to reach the full Parliament.
Independence circumscribed the Central Executive's recourse to the Catalan campaign. On March 13, after failing to approve the budgets of the Generalitat, President Pere Aragonès announced the electoral call for the elections of May 12 and the appeal of the Government of Pedro Sánchez arrived after a month that the Chamber Catalan through the Solidarity ILP.
Despite the fact that the sovereignist forces criticized the central government's appeal, there are pro-independence voices that understand the ILP as "a trap" and a loophole for the forces that have representation, since in a plenary session of the Chamber this initiative had no air of go ahead under no circumstances. Solidarity, the party that presented it, has in fact tried unsuccessfully to stand in the elections.
