A slam of the door by the High Court of Catalonia (TSJC) to the Catalan Parliament. Three judges who were part of the committee controlling Popular Legislative Initiatives (ILPs) have informed the parliamentary Bureau that they are resigning, according to sources from the chamber this Tuesday. For the moment, the reasons for their departure have not been revealed, but it is relevant that the committee is now facing the task of studying and validating a new ILP calling for a Catalan declaration of independence, which was accepted for parliamentary processing by the Bureau, on 20th February this year. The three judges who have resigned are: Francisco José Sospedra Navas, of the administrative disputes chamber of the TSJC and president of the ILP commission; Xavier Nonet Frigola, also from the court's administrative disputes chamber, and Amparo Illán Teba, from the TSJC social chamber. The governance chamber of the High Court has communicated the resignation of the three judges, with the reasons currently unknown, and nor is it known whether the TSJC will continue to take part in the committee.
The motives of the three judges, then, are being treated as private and the chamber of governance has accepted them, TSJC press office sources have clarified to ElNacional.cat. In fact, in the governance chamber's accord, it is noted that judge Maria Eugènia Alegret recused herself from the debate on the case of the three judges to avoid being challenged in the study of the complaint presented by the far-right group Vox to the TSJC against the Bureau for having admitted this ILP on the declaration of independence to hearing.
Committee exists due to lack of a law
Catalonia still does not have its own electoral law and, therefore, has to be governed by Spanish electoral law and the functions of the Electoral Commission. Under the Spanish legislation, supervision of ILPs is carried out by the so-called control committee, which is made up of: three TSJC judges, who must elect the committee president from among themselves; three constitutional law or political science professors of recognized prestige, appointed by the Bureau of Parliament; three lawyers of recognized prestige also appointed by the Bureau, based on a joint proposal of the parliamentary groups, and one of the lawyers of Parliament acts as secretary.
The rest of the members
The current academic members of the ILP commission are: Jordi Capo i Giol, Eva Anduiza Perea and Albert Noguera i Fernández. The current three lawyers are: Alicia Ramos Jordan, Daniel Fernández Cañueto and Eusebi Campdepadrós i Pucurull, former member of the parliamentary Bureau, who was tried by the TSJC, together with her colleagues on the Bureau when led by Roger Torrent, accused of disobeying the Constitutional Court, precisely for allowing debate on a declaration of independence and a resolution against the king, and were acquitted. However, the prosecutors have lodged an appeal against the acquittal in the Supreme Court.
The ILP motion
Specifically, the Bureau admitted the legislative proposal from Catalan Solidarity for Independence, presented in the ILP, with three votes in favour (the two of Junts and that of the CUP), one abstention from ERC and two votes against (those of the PSC). The initiative, registered last February 2nd, must first be validated by the ILP control committee, and from then on, a period of 120 working days will begin to collect in which the necessary 50,000 signatures must be collected in order for the start of parliamentary debate on the motion.
The Catalan Declaration of Independence bill states that the "decision to declare independence belongs to the people of Catalonia as holders of national sovereignty, and to the Parliament of Catalonia as their democratically elected representative ". The text seeks to empower the Catalan government to "negotiate the international recognition" of the declaration of independence and specifies that this will be effective "when the law is passed, when the form and timing of the declaration of independence have been negotiated with the international community and when it is declared by a majority of deputies in a solemn session of the Parliament of Catalonia convened for that purpose".
For their part, Vox and Ciudadanos have announced that they will take legal action against the Bureau for having accepted this popular legislative initiative, which has an unfavourable legal report (of an advisory nature) from the secretary of the ILP control committee, Xavier Muro, on its admissibility.