Spain's Constitutional Court has decided to hear the state's appeal against the Catalan law guaranteeing universal health care access, according to the official state gazette published this Saturday. By lodging the appeal, Spanish prime minister Rajoy invoked article 161.2 of the Spanish Constitution, and this means that with the court's decision to hear the appeal, it has automatically suspended the validity and the application of the law concerned, until a definitive decision is made.
Passed by the Catalan Parliament in June last year, the law establishes that all people resident in Catalonia have the right to health care funded from the public purse, through the Catalan Health Service, CatSalut, with all residents being able to prove their entitlement simply by registering their address with their local council. The Constitutional Court has already declared the unconstitutionality of a Valencian law with equivalent purposes, among them, guaranteeing universal health care access to immigrants in a legally-irregular situation.