A judge serving on Spain's Constitutional Court, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, is recusing himself from cases related to the Catalan independence issue, the second member of the court to take such action. The institution itself has reported that, this Wednesday morning, the judge presented the president of the Constitutional Court, Juan José González Rivas, with a letter announcing his abstention in appeals for constitutional protection related to the Catalan independence leaders' trial.
The defence team of Catalan president in exile Carles Puigdemont had made submissions to the court requesting the recusal of Conde-Pumpido in the appeals on the case. They allege that he is not “neutral” or “impartial” due to an address he gave in November 2017 expressing his opinion on the independence process. As well as this challenge to the judge, there was another presented by Oriol Junqueras and Raül Romeva.
Judge Conde-Pumpido's letter will now be considered by a jurisdictional hearing of the court itself. The judge recently signed the decision rejecting the appeal by former Catalan government minister Meritxell Borràs, asserting the Supreme Court's competence in the case. Lawyer Andreu Van den Eynde, who defends Junqueras and former minister Romeva, questioned Conde-Pumpido's impartiality, saying that his 2017 address in the Congress of Deputies described the events that took place in Catalonia that autumn as "threats" to the democratic order.
Another of the judges of this court, Antonio Narváez, also withdrew a few weeks ago from the deliberations on the appeals against the Catalan independence leaders' trial, after several of those found guilty asked for his recusal, also for statements he had made in a speech describing the events of 2017 as a ‘coup’. Puigdemont also challenged Narvaez in his appeals.
The speech
In Conde-Pumpido's speech, delivered in the Congress of Deputies a few weeks after Catalonia's 2017 referendum and the suspension of its self-government, the judge rejected "that democracy - in particular, direct democracy - could be invoked to overthrow the Constitution”, and he was particularly critical of the fact those responsible for waving this flag were at the head of autonomous institutions with economic resources and weapons at their disposal.
Conde-Pumpido added in relation to Catalonia's laws of 'disconnection', that by passing them, the pro-independence leaders had "risen up against the national sovereignty residing in the Spanish people, convoking a fraction of the Catalan people, in defiance of the unity of the nation, to decide the fate of the common State." “And note that the Constitutional Court itself uses the expression ‘they have risen up’, which is an expression that also appears in relevant offences in the Penal Code,” the judge pointed out in his speech.
For the defence lawyers of Junqueras and Romeva, Conde-Pumpido's words show his "personal opinion on the criminal significance of the actions attributed" to the pro-independence leaders and reveal the magistrate's "knowledge" of the court proceedings underway.