Spanish Supreme Court applies Catalan amnesty while rebuking its own oversight

Spain's Supreme Court has extinguished the criminal responsibility of those convicted over the 1 October 2017 Catalan referendum — while using the same ruling to publicly rebuke the Constitutional Court's president, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, for what the magistrates called an invasive interference in their jurisdiction.

The Criminal Chamber's decision, reported by Libertad Digital on Tuesday, applies the Amnesty Law to lift the disqualifications of Oriol Junqueras, Dolors Bassa, Jordi Turull and Raül Romeva, and declares null its own earlier rulings that had excluded embezzlement convictions from amnesty. The ruling follows a Constitutional Court decision — approved seven votes to five on Conde-Pumpido's draft opinion amnestying Bassa — after which investigating judge Pablo Llarena lifted the arrest warrants against the fugitives Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Lluís Puí. The Supreme Court notified the Justice Ministry so the criminal records of the referendum convicts can be removed.

What makes the auto remarkable is its tone. Drafted by magistrate Manuel Marchena, it accuses Conde-Pumpido of adorning his reasoning with "unnecessary grandiloquence" and "manifestly dispensable" considerations that "directly attack" Supreme Court magistrates, describing a "drastic contradiction" with both courts' jurisdictions. The Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court warns, is transforming itself into a last instance with revisory power over any norm the Supreme Court interprets — blurring the design the 1978 constitution-makers intended between independent judges and magistrates serving fixed nine-year terms. It was, in short, a court complying with an order while putting on record that the order-giver had overstepped.

The same day, 40 days out from the 29 November election, Pedro Sánchez's government continued governing by decree. After the Council of Ministers, spokesperson minister Elma Saiz announced a social package: widow's pensions extended to unmarried couples with two years' proven cohabitation, higher orphanhood pensions for children of gender-violence victims, expanded benefits for carers of seriously ill children, and a new "catastrophic events" category for temporary incapacity — applicable, Saiz noted, to the flooding now hitting Valencia. Housing minister Isabel Rodríguez added €225 million for construction, €180 million of it earmarked for regions that have declared stressed housing zones, plus €45 million for 2,000 new university residence places. With a changed majority in congress's standing committee, the decrees pass without ordinary parliamentary procedure — a tool Sánchez has used more frequently than any of his predecessors.

Five ordinary Councils of Ministers remain before election day. The court has spoken, the decrees are signed, and the campaign is running on both.