Spain's Constitutional Court has endorsed the oaths used by pro-independence MPs in the plenary session of Congress on May 21st, 2019, when they referred to the "Catalan Republic" and the "mandate of the 1st October" to swear their allegiance to the Spanish Constitution. Thus, the judges, divided, rejected an appeal lodged by the People's Party (PP) against the decision of the speaker of the Spanish Congress, Meritxell Batet, who considered the formulas to be valid. According to the PP, mentioning the "Catalan Republic" as well as "political prisoners" invalidates compliance and violates the Constitutional Court's doctrine and the rights of the rest of the deputies. The court, however, disagreed and concluded that Batet's decision did not affect other MPs.
According to the resolution, the court argues that preventing MPs from assuming their status would have generated a situation of inequality with respect to other compliance formulas verbalized by representatives of other parties. The judges thus conclude that "it is not proven that the decision of the speaker of Congress has had any effect in undermining rights and powers that make up the status of the position of a deputy of Congress of which the plaintiffs are holders". Therefore, the resolution affirms that "there has been no unequal treatment of different MPs, since all the compliance formulas were validated", noting that "the claim of the plaintiffs, that the 29 MPs who added their own specific formulas for the oath should have been treated differently hides a request that a different treatment be given between cases that they understand as unequal, which are not protected by the principle of equality".
Specifically, eight MPs from the PP signed an appeal against the formulas used on 21st May 2019 by the sovereignist MPs when they swore on the Spanish Constitution. "For the freedom of the political prisoners and the return of the exiles and for the Catalan Republic, yes, I promise by legal imperative", affirmed the members of ERC in the Congress of Deputies, while those of Junts swore on the Constitution "by legal imperative with loyalty to the democratic mandate of 1st October and to the people of Catalonia". Oaths that did not please the Spanish right and that, in the same session of Congress, provoked protests by the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox.
The court, divided
The resolution of the Constitutional Court was adopted with the vote of all the progressive judges, except that of former minister Juan Carlos Campo, who was not present at the plenary session and abstained. However, the four conservative judges voted against, and three of them, Ricardo Enríquez, Enrique Arnaldo and Concepción Espejel, wrote a minority opinion on the matter, in which they disagreed with the approved decision.