Carrying on relentlessly. The former deputy speaker of the Catalan Parliament, Josep Costa, has extended the appeal he made to an administrative disputes chamber of the Spanish Supreme Court in which he calls for the annulment of the decisions by the president of the High Court of Catalonia (TSJC), Jesús Maria Barrientos, who chose two of the three judges who made up the court that tried the parliamentary Bureau, led by speaker Roger Torrent. Costa maintains that judge Barrientos violated the rules to choose the substitutes he wanted. This court acquitted the four pro-independence members of ERC and Junts (Torrent, Costa, Eusebi Campdepadrós and Adriana Delgado) of the crime of disobedience to the Constitutional Court last November, although the public prosecutors and the defence have both appealed to the Supreme Court. Costa's objective - in appealing against a case which he ostensibly won - is for "the TSJC to choose an impartial court", which - he adds - "should annul the entire case".
At the same time, in the criminal process, Josep Costa also presented, on January 24th, a cassation appeal against the TSJC's ruling on the Bureau, which despite the acquittal of the 4 MPs, also finished with a minority opinion being given by judge Marta Pesqueira, claiming that the MPs were the authors of a crime of disobedience for having accepted resolutions on self-determination and against the king. The public prosecutors requested that Torrent, Costa and Campdepadrós be sentenced to a 20-month ban from office and a fine of 30,000 euros, and Delgado to a 16-month ban and a fine of 25,000 euros. Costa explains that he is presenting the appeal because the court did not respond to his request to be allowed to present evidence to demonstrate the breaching of the inviolability of the Parliament of Catalonia, and that "radically, the court has no jurisdiction". In addition, he openly states that he is making this appeal in order to exhaust the internal appeals route and then to be able to present a case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
The violations, according to Costa
In the administrative disputes claim, Josep Costa states that the decisions of the president of the TSJC, of September 2nd and 19th, represent "a gross violation" of fundamental rights: the right to present an appeal, to an impartial court, to equality and to obtain reasoned resolutions. In addition, he states that the decisions he is contesting "are based on rules and a list of substitute judges that are not public". In the appeal, Costa also denounces the agreement of the standing committee of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), on November 10th, not to accept his appeal against the selection of the judges, assuring that judge Barrientos's decision was jurisdictional and not governmental and, therefore, he was unable to take part and he had to go to the court, as he has done now.
Specifically, in the appeal filed on February 22nd, Josep Costa states that the president of the TSJC did not correctly apply article 199 of the Spanish judicial law (LOPJ), which defines how substitute judges must be selected. Last summer, room 77 of the TSJC accepted the recusals of Barrientos and judge Carlos Ramos, following a request by Costa who alleged their lack of impartiality. Barrientos, as president of the TSJC, chose Marta Pesqueira, as the judge who would replace him, as she was the only one available in the list of voluntary substitutes who sign up annually. According to Costa, first, as the law stipulates, he should have appealed to the judges of the civil and criminal chambers of the TSJC, or of the appeals court, or of the list of judges of Territorial Assignment (JAT), as he later did with the choice of the substitute judge Ramos for judge Francisco Segura Sancho, who is part of the TSJC's criminal appeals chamber.
Josep Costa describes all this action by the TSJC as "legal insecurity" and "lack of transparency" and asks the Supreme Court to annul the decisions and to elect a new court to analyze the case of the parliamentary Bureau - and to annul it.