Spanish justice declared unconstitutional the first confinement decreed by the coronavirus pandemic

The plenary assembly of the Spanish Constitutional Court declared that the state of alarm that the government of Pedro Sánchez decreed on March 14, 2020 exceeded the current legal framework. The decision also states that To apply containments, the Exception status, which determined the prior agreement of the Congress.

With one voice, and going back to the start of the pandemic, the magistrates consider that the suspension of freedom of movement that resulted in home confinement was unconstitutional, by virtue of which this fundamental right could have been modulated but not suspended indiscriminately.

The first consequence of this decision, which is taken at the request of the unconstitutionality appeal of the far-right party Vox, is that loose fines are waived, although court protected the state from massive claims, giving a framework limiting the scope of your decision.

For the government, the judgment of the Constitutional Court known this Wednesday is a harsh interpellation of the executive, who reacted annoyed, reaffirming that the decree invalidated by the highest court, surprising not to know that this decision “was absolutely essential to save lives”.

For days there was strong internal tension in the Constitution. The agreement came after a split vote on the constitutionality of the decree of the head of government. Two blockages in antagonistic positions since the subject was brought to plenary a few weeks ago.

Although there was a 15-day delay in reaching the greatest possible agreement, ultimately It was the vote of Vice-President Encarnación Roca, a judge elected on the proposal of Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party (PSOE), which tipped the scales in favor of declaring it partially unconstitutional.. Six magistrates against five who consider that the restriction of freedoms was not in conformity with the legal framework.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, a constitutional debate has arisen regarding the need or not to declare a state of emergency in cases of suspension of the fundamental freedoms of Spanish citizens. According to part of the doctrine, the state of alert was sufficient as a legal guarantee. For other constitutional scholars, quarantines are a restriction on fundamental rights that require a declaration of a state of emergency.

For the government, in addition to parliamentary control prior to closures, declaring a state of emergency implies a much more severe restriction on fundamental rights and he hijacked control from the legislative branch.

Faced with an internal political crisis in the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez, which even resulted this week in the withdrawal of part of his cabinet, the sentence expresses a “political” position. The Supreme Court, with six votes for and five against, supports the presentation of one of its magistrates, the conservative Antonio Trevijano, Argument of the right to accuse the Government of having managed the pandemic with an unconstitutional measureAlthough the urgency of the legal instrument was aimed at “saving lives” amid the worst of the health crisis that claimed more than 81,000 lives.

In practice, the penalty will have no effect on citizens, since the only thing that will have to be studied is how many fines already collected will have to be returned following a conviction which cancels a single article of the decree of the state of alert. Lawyers explain limitation of fault by maintaining that as part of their decision “citizens have a legal duty to bear the material damage they have suffered”.

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