The judge who branded the Procés a "covert coup d'état" now halts the right to vote of the 'amnesty law'

MadridThe Supreme Court judge who drafted the interlocutory ruling that blocks the right to vote for thousands of Spaniards who obtained nationality by availing themselves of the Democratic Memory Law – endorsing the PP's thesis that the grandchildren law is a “founded, real and serious danger” that could “gravely affect the objectivity and transparency” of the elections– is an old acquaintance of the independence movement. He is Antonio Narváez, who was a magistrate of the Constitutional Court from 2014 to 2023 and, therefore, played a prominent role during the years of the 'Procés'. His name resonates in Catalonia because in February 2021 he withdrew from the debate on the amparo appeals of the political prisoners against the October 1st sentence. He had to self-exclude after the pro-independence leaders collectively requested his recusal due to words he had spoken in November 2017.

It was at a conference in Granada at the Constitution Club, which defines itself as a “critical observatory” of constitutionality in Spain with the goal of “keeping alive the spirit” of the Transition. There, he presented the 'Procés' as a “covert coup d'état” and asserted that it was “much more serious” due to “its consequences” than the 23-F coup d'état instigated by Antonio Tejero: “There, something as essential as the principle of sovereignty and, above all, the principle of the unity of Spain within its diversity was not in question,” he argued. Four years later, this left him out of the debates regarding the judgment of the 'Procés' trial.

But this is not his only link to Catalonia. During his time at the Constitutional Court, Antonio Narváez was the rapporteur of the judgment that confirmed the conviction for the events of the 2011 siege of the Parliament. The high court dismissed the appeals that eight protesters had filed after the Supreme Court convicted them, revoking the acquittal that the National Court had issued. Precisely, last week the European Court of Human Rights struck down the concept of environmental violence that Manuel Marchena invented in that judgment and which he subsequently used in the 'Procés' judgment. By the way, a little over a year ago, Narváez attended the presentation of Marchena's book.

He expressed the wish that Feijóo reaches the Moncloa

However, the newspaper archive that the PSOE has clung to in order to discredit Antonio Narváez dates back to April 2023. At a dinner that Alberto Núñez Feijóo held with about fifty conservative prosecutors at a hotel in Madrid, he expressed his desire for the PP leader to become president of the Spanish government, as explained by El País at the time. “Personally, I say I hope so and I am declaring my position,” he said. But he did not stop there. At a time when he was a prosecutor of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court – he was for two and a half years after leaving the Constitutional Court –, he said that Bildu was a “pro-terrorist organization” and accused Pedro Sánchez of having caused the “deterioration of institutions”.

From Ferraz, they have taken advantage of this precedent to attack the judge. “Is this being independent?”, asked the PSOE spokesperson, Montse Mínguez, this Monday. “We socialists have eyes in our heads,” she added, considering that there are judges who use the calendar of cases to go against the Spanish government: “There are some who want to and others who have been at it for twelve or fourteen years and are getting old.” And she lamented that, with the law on amnesty, Vox is carrying out the “electoral program” for the PP. “If they are Spanish, they must be able to vote,” she concluded.

The JEC complies with the Supreme Court's decision

Just this Monday, the Central Electoral Board has accepted the Supreme Court's decision to block the right to vote of those nationalized under the grandchildren law and has demanded that consulates provide the “certification” that proves that the people who have obtained nationality through this route are descendants of exiles. It was one of the requirements imposed by the high court. They will have to demonstrate that they were born “outside of Spain, to a father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, who were originally Spanish”, that they suffered exile for “political, ideological, belief, or sexual orientation or identity reasons” and that they “lost or renounced” their Spanish nationality.

What is under the eye of the hurricane is an instruction from the Director General of Legal Security and Public Faith –who is the sister of minister Óscar Puente– which was published five days after the entry into force of the democratic memory law and which presumed the status of exiles for all those who left Spain from 1936 to 1955. In this sense, the JEC has also ordered the Electoral Census Office to make a “breakdown” between the people who obtained nationality directly through the democratic memory law and those who benefited from the instruction.