A divided Constitutional Court again agrees with Vox and cancels the second state of alarm

The far-right party resorted to some of the main measures and restrictions imposed during this second state of alarm to cope with the successive waves of the pandemic prior to the start of vaccination. Among them, measures such as the night curfew or the limitation to the number of non-cohabitants who could coincide in meetings.

The Constitutional Court explains in a statement that it declares null both the six-month extension and the delegation in the autonomous communities. This implies that it does not declare null measures such as the curfew or the limitation to the number of people who can meet, but it does declare the articles that allowed the autonomous governments, for example, to advance the curfew at ten o'clock at night and reduce the number of people who could get together. The article that set limits to the people who could meet in places of worship is also annulled, leaving the quantification in the hands of the competent delegated authority.

As reported by the Constitutional Court in a statement, what they do not consider adjusted to the Magna Carta "is not the duration of the extension, by itself and without further ado, but the unreasonable or unfounded nature." For the majority of the plenary session, this six-month determination "was made in a way that was entirely inconsistent with the constitutional meaning that is proper to the act of authorization and without any coherence, even with the reasons that the Government asserted to finally urge the extension. granted ".

The magistrates who designate the autonomous communities as delegated competent authorities also censure. It contravenes, they say, the Law that regulates the states of crisis and it was also agreed "on a permanent basis the delegation without any reservation of the effective supervision or the eventual certification to the Government itself, of what the delegated Authorities could act in their respective areas. territorial ".

The plenary session has once again been split in half as in previous sentences on the state of alarm and the measures of the central executive. Six magistrates have voted in favor of granting the appeal and four have voted against it. They are María Luisa Balaguer, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, Juan Antonio Xiol and the president of the court, Juan José González Rivas, who will cast their individual votes.

Third sentence in favor of Vox

This is the third ruling of the court of guarantees on a state of alarm or measures taken to alleviate the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. On July 14, an equally divided plenary considered another Vox appeal and declared unconstitutional the confinement established by the Government during the worst of the first wave. The judges, with six in favor and five against, understood that the legal coverage of the state of alarm was insufficient for a measure that, in their opinion, directly suspended the fundamental right to free movement.

A second sentence in a similar vein came just a few weeks ago, when the same Constitutional Court upheld another appeal from the ultra-rightists and declared the suspension of terms in Congress during the first weeks of the first wave unconstitutional. He did it with a plenary session again divided with six votes in favor and four against and with the majority understanding that the political rights of the Vox deputies were violated by the measure of the Lower House Committee.

In both cases, up to five members of the plenary have issued seven opposing individual votes from both the progressive sector and the conservative sector. Regarding the first state of alarm, the dissenters understood that it was not necessary to declare a state of exception to impose a confinement that, moreover, did not suspend but rather limited the right to mobility. Regarding the decision of the Board of Congress, the dissenting magistrates concluded that the lower house did not completely close down and that the more than 50 Vox deputies had other ways to control the activity of the executive in those weeks.

The vote was held after the Government and the Popular Party have made public their agreement, yet to be materialized, to renew four magistrates with the term expired since mid-2019. President Juan José González Rivas, Vice President Encarnación Roca, Fernando Valdés and Andrés Ollero will be replaced by Concepción Espejel, Juan Ramón Sáez, Inmaculada Montalbán and Enrique Arnaldo. The next renewal of the four magistrates appointed by the Government and the CGPJ will arrive next summer.