• Judgment of the 1-O. The Supreme sentence to Junqueras to 13 years for sedition with embezzlement and between nine and 12 to the rest of those imprisoned for the 'procés'
  • Procés.The opinion of the general lawyer of the European Union affects the immunity of Carles Puigdemont
  • Brussels.The EU attorney general maintains that Oriol Junqueras had immunity until the Supreme Court ruling

The Plenary Session of the Constitutional Court plans to resume this week the deliberations on amparo appeals presented by the former vice president of the Generalitat Oriol Junqueras against the situation of pretrial detention in which he spent almost two years until he was firmly sentenced by the Supreme Court on Last October 14.

According to legal sources to EL MUNDO, two drafts of judgment on the leader of ERC will be discussed in the guarantees court. One, whose presentation has corresponded to the president of the Constitutional Court, Juan José González Rivas , against the preventive detention decreed first by the National Court, and later extended by the Supreme Court; and another, presentation by magistrate Juan Antonio Xiol , against the decision of judge Pablo Llarena, instructor of the process , to prevent the independence leader from attending the constitutive session of the Parliament in January 2018.

Different sources of this body report that although González Rivas proposes to dismiss the demand for protection of Oriol Junqueras - sentenced to 13 years in prison for a crime of sedition in medial competition with embezzlement of public flows -, the progressive magistrate Juan Antonio Xiol proposes To estimate the recourse of the independence leader when he understood that the Supreme Court had to grant the prisoner an extraordinary release permit to attend the constitutive session of the Catalan Chamber after having been elected regional deputy on December 21, 2017.

On January 12, 2018, the procés instructor dictated a car where he rejected that Junqueras went to the Parliament against the risk of existing criminal repetition, although he granted him the possibility of delegating his vote to another deputy if he so requested. In short, Judge Pablo Llarena agreed that it would be the Parliament of Catalonia that "enabled" the precise instruments so that Junqueras could access his status as a parliamentarian, under the terms required in Article 23 of the Catalan Chamber's Regulations, despite being in a situation of pretrial detention.

"Political rights of a parliamentarian"

The defense of the ERC leader, exercised by the lawyer Andreu Van den Eynde , requested amparo from the TC since the decision adopted by Llarena - and backed by the Appeals Chamber of the Supreme Court - "destroyed the political rights of a parliamentarian and those of the citizenship it represents ". The lawyer also stressed that it was the Regulation of the Parliament of Catalonia that established and ordered the rights and powers that correspond to the regional parliamentarians and that provided for the cases of suspension (or deprivation) of the exercise of the same, once acquired the full status of deputy.

Constitutional sources consulted by this newspaper explain that the key is to elucidate whether with this decision the Supreme violated - or not - the fundamental rights of Junqueras contained in articles 17 and 23 of the Constitution . The first of them enshrines the right to freedom, and article 23, the right to political participation.

The presentation of Xiol, together with that of the president, has been included in the plenary agenda that is held this week so that both are debated by the 12 magistrates that make up the guarantee court. In the case of the draft sentence of González Rivas, which proposes to dismiss Junqueras' request for amparo against pretrial detention, it is the second time that it will be addressed by the Plenary after the magistrates celebrated last January a first deliberation on the matter and there would be division within the court.

Three TC magistrates, Xiol, Fernando Valdés Re and María Luisa Balaguer , objected to the proposal brought to plenary by the president after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in a ruling that Turkey violated the fundamental rights of the former boss prokurdo of the Peoples Democratic Party, Shelattin Demirtas , when he kept him imprisoned as a parliamentarian. These magistrates asked Juan José González Rivas to reinforce the argumentation of his sentence regarding the deprivation of liberty in collision with the exercise of political participation.

In addition, this division of the Plenary, in a matter of great sensitivity, occurred a few days after the trial against the leaders of the process began in the Supreme Court, which caused misgivings and serious discomfort in the Chamber presided by Judge Manuel Marchena .

Hence, in order not to interfere with the evolution of the judicial process that was followed in the Supreme Court, the president of the Constitutional Court decided to park for months the debate on the amparo remedies of Oriol Junqueras until the High Court issued the sentence against the promoters of the 1-O.

Without a doubt, it will be a litmus test for González Rivas to achieve unanimity in a matter as delicate as the responses to the Junqueras shelters. Any particular vote where it is concluded that the Supreme Court has violated fundamental rights of the leader of Esquerra in the cause of the process would open to the prisoner, already firmly condemned, a clear way to knock on the Strasbourg gate.

Juan Antonio Xiol, a progressive Catalan

The paper that, if approved in the Constitutional Court, would serve as an asset to Oriol Junqueras to go to the Strasbourg Court belongs to the progressive magistrate Juan Antonio Xiol. This Catalan is one of the judges who enjoys more prestige within the judicial career. There is consensus in the magistracy on the high legal qualification of Xiol, a togado specialized in both civil and contentious-administrative law.

With extensive experience behind him, he arrived at the guarantees court in 2013 after presiding over the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court. Previously, he had also been the general secretary of the Constitutional Court - a position for which he was appointed in 1982 - and a member of the most convulsed Judicial General Council in history.

At the proposal of the Minister of Socialist Justice Fernando Ledesma was appointed General Director of Relations with the Administration of Justice in the Council of Ministers on October 2, 1985, a position in which he ceased five years later, on October 5, 1990.

During his years in the Civil and Contentious Chambers of the Supreme, Xiol was also responsible for integrating Room 61 of the Supreme. On May 1, 2011, he cast a private vote against the court's decision to prevent Batasuna's heiress, Bildu, from attending local elections on May 22, 2011.

A year later, after the resignation of Carlos Dívar as president of the Supreme Court, he had to take over the acting presidency of that body until the Council elected Judge Gonzalo Moliner as a substitute for Dívar.

Those who know him say that the great illusion of Juan Antonio Xiol was always to be a constitutional magistrate. His name now sounds like future president of that body.

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