The decision of Spain's Constitutional Court to suspend the Catalan presidential investiture session if the candidate, Carles Puigdemont, is not present - and which furthermore requires him to obtain judicial authorization in order to attend - is an act of legal abuse, legal arbitrariness, political barbarism and another instance supporting the trend for the interests of the Spanish state to be placed above the law. The Court does not give a formal response to the legal challenge made by the Spanish government, and yet goes far beyond - claiming for itself competences that belong to the Catalan Parliament and interpreting parliamentary regulations which nobody had requested it to do. It is evident that the Spanish government has made a fraudulent use of the ability it has to turn to the Constitutional Court and have it suspend everything that the executive puts before it. But that is nothing other than constitutional fraud. Putting the unity of Spain above the law is not only clumsy but is also a democratic scandal that will one day have consequences.
It is not the first time that the Constitutional Court has put the established legality to one side and dedicated itself to playing politics, as if it were the third chamber of the Spanish legislature. This was indeed the way that the current conflict between Spain and Catalonia began, with the Court's verdict on Catalonia's Statute of Autonomy in July 2010, thoroughly abusive and insulting for Catalans. There was no juridical basis for that foolishness but there was indeed a political intention, which was none other than that of gradually proceeding to the dismantling of Spain's state of autonomous regions. It was because of that that the Statute could not be allowed to pass. The theses in favour of recentralization had clear support in Spain from the beginning of the 21st century and the Constitutional Court gave them all the backing necessary on that occasion. And now it has done so again, based on one single maxim: unity first.
On this occasion, the abuse committed by the 13 members of the Court - judge Carlos Ollero, who was ill, withdrew at midday- is not a minor matter, since its decision is made in the face of the opposing views of three reports that it had on the table. That of the senior consultative body the Council of State, which unanimously opposed the Spanish government's desire - to suspend the session of the Catalan parliament in advance on the grounds that Carles Puigdemont could not be a candidate; that of the Constitutional Court's own legal counsel, which in a similar way considered the Spanish government's request inconsistent, and that of the Court's reporting judge on this matter, Juan Antonio Xiol Rios, which also recommended against accepting the government view.
The decision does not put an end either to the Court's own crisis or to that of its political utilization. Nor does it clarify the decision that the Board of the Catalan Parliament will have to make, having been prevented by the Court from calling the session unless it manages to meet the impossible condition of the physical presence of a Puigdemont who has previously turned himself over to justice. Above all, because everybody knows, after the extraordinary mess delivered this Saturday, that the decision adopted by the judges was political and not juridical.