The Toga Wars

There’s now a war going on in the Cortes. As someone said last week – ‘you tried it with the tricornios (a reference to the Guardia Civil Tejero’s attempted coup in 1981) now you are trying again with togas (the Constitutional Court’s favoured accoutrement)’. This time, though, things are going better for those nostalgic for the Old Order. A vote last week in the Cortes had agreed to (finally) switch two judges out of the Constitutional Court for two fresh ones, thus breaking the four-year-overdue control on that body by the conservatives. The Senate would ratify the vote today, (Thursday). 

But the Constitutional Court – in an unprecedented move – has ordered the Senate not to vote on this issue. El País calls it ‘El Pleno de Sabotaje’, saying ‘The conservative majority of the Constitutional Court (TC) places Spain before an unprecedented interference in the legislative power’. The judges refuse to be properly and constitutionally (!) sacked. From Europa Press here: ‘The PSOE censors that the judges Trevijano and Narváez (the two due to be removed) vote to reject their own challenge in the TC’.  

El Huff Post here: ‘Sánchez asks the public for "serenity" and promises to put an end to the blockade of the Judiciary. He blames the PP for this institutional crisis by trying to retain "a power that citizens have not endorsed at the polls"’ (with video).  

The Guardian says here: ‘Spanish judges block draft legislation that would affect their own court. Claims of ‘a coup against democracy’ as conservative judges freeze passage of government measures’. 

For some balance, here’s the opinion of El Mundo: ‘The decision of the Constitutional Court to suspend the express judicial reform of the Government that the Senate was going to approve in its plenary session this Thursday is proof that the rule of law prevails. The Executive has tightened the strings to the extreme, but the TC has acted in accordance with the law and its powers…’.  

Politico says ‘…The court ruling does not affect other changes that Congress approved as part of the penal code reform. They include the elimination of the crime of sedition and reductions of sanctions for misuse of public funds in certain cases. The opposition has accused the government of pandering to Catalan nationalists with both changes’. (Odd that the PP didn’t try and stop this part of the reform too).

The Spanish parliament is elected democratically; the Constitutional Court, not so much. As Baltasar Garzón noted last summer: “It is clear that Justice is being used in Spain to bring about the fall of a president”.