The judge José González Rivas has just given up his post as president of the Spanish Constitutional Court, after being at the head of this court since 2017, a member since 2012 and a judge of the Supreme Court since 1997. At the age of 70, he leaves his office having immersed it a little more deeply in the quagmire which many Spanish institutions have sunk into; and which, sadly, have offered the worst possible image of a Spain that could have aspired to be considered as one of the modern states of Europe and has ended up being irrelevant in the international order and very distant from the democratic parameters of other countries.
A way of understanding the now ex-president of the Constitutional Court, considered conservative and, as he has been described "with strong religious sensibilities", is his dissenting ruling in relation to the sentence that endorsed the legislation on homosexual marriage in Spain. In that text he wrote that the union of persons of the same sex in marriage distorted the essence of the institution. Similarly, his opposition to adoptions by same-sex couples on the basis that they were an "attack on the prevailing interest of the child." There could be others too, but the truth is that González Rivas was president of the Constitutional Court for a long time, meaning that in this field one can get obtain quite a close idea of his approach.
But for Catalans and, more generally, for all of us who have experienced perplexity as the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court have acted on the issue of the independence process, the complicity between one institution and another in how they speed up or slow down a matter, how sentences have been issued based on the most absolute insularity, which will produce a trainwreck on an unprecedented scale in Europe, the constitutional body has been through a dark period during these years. When, this Thursday, I heard González Rivas explain his role over the years he has been there, he spoke of impartiality and ethics, adding that on the subject of the independence process he had acted rapidly, moderately and prudently, without a shred of self-criticism, it only reflected that, between Madrid and Europe, the back of justice is turned.
Thus, when he explained that what the court had to do, and did, with the appeals of the Catalan political prisoners, or the exiled leaders in their various judicial proceedings, was to preserve the supremacy of the Constitution and the unity of the Spanish nation, everything was much easier to understand. Unity above all, even if the justice system had to cut so many corners that its image in Europe on this issue does not come up to the standards of any European country or institution.
And it's good that there is criticism heaped on those who are entering the court, like the ineffable Enrique Arnaldo Alcubilla, but those who leave were not very different. Those who arrived after the agreements between the PSOE and the PP, and the votes of endorsement with pegs on their noses, as they were described, by Podemos - the latest party to climb aboard the bandwagon of broad consensus - are not very different from those who have left. Because this is what is called gatopardism: changing everything so that nothing changes.