The Supreme Court considers that the appeals against the pardons of those convicted of the procés should be reviewed to avoid the existence of “an area immune to judicial control.”

That is one of the arguments included in the records that revoke the initial decision of the High Court not to examine the appeals due to the lack of legitimacy of the appellants to challenge the Government’s decision. That first refusal was very tight (three votes to two) and with the change in the composition of the Chamber it has been reversed: three votes in favor of revising the pardons and two individual votes.

In the reasoning of the Chamber released this Thursday, it is included, in addition to avoiding that immunity space, that of guaranteeing “maximum guarantee of the right to effective judicial protection” of those who appealed: Vox, Popular Party, Catalan deputies of Cs and from the PP, the former delegate of the Government in Catalonia Enric Millo and the Catalan Civic Coexistence and Pro Patrimonium Sijena and Jerusalem associations. Only the latter has been denied legitimacy.

The magistrates emphasize that the legitimacy to appeal, which is what the magistrates’ analysis has focused on at this stage, “is one of the darkest concepts of Procedural Law, to the point that, as has been said, it is more confusing the more that is written about him.

They add that there are no generalized solutions and that each specific situation must be studied. To this is added that in this case the pardons are “for very unique crimes: against society, that protect collective legal rights”, which makes the task of discerning who can appeal them even more complex.

Faced with so much uncertainty, the court concludes that the allegations of the appeal must be thoroughly examined, without it being possible in the initial black phase to legitimize the appellants. If they do not have it, that will be established in the sentence, but only after having thoroughly studied the case.

The decision is signed by magistrates Wenceslao Francisco Olea, Fernando Román and Inés Huerta. The first two presented a particular vote to the first inadmissibility of the resources. The magistrate joined the Fifth Contentious-Administrative Section in time to study the reversal appeals against the inadmissibility.

Two magistrates -Octavio Juan Herrero and Ángel Ramón Arozamena- have presented a dissenting individual vote in which they support the thesis that in principle was the majority that the appellants were not affected by the pardon decision, so they were not entitled to appeal them.

The two magistrates reject that their criterion supposes generating “immunity”, because that obeys what has been wanted to establish in the laws. “It is the legislator who, assessing the scope of public, general, collective and institutional interests, determines and defines the legitimacy for their defense.”

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