The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled in favor of the Spanish justice system for restricting the political rights of Jordi Sánchez, Jordi Turull, and Oriol Junqueras following their imprisonment for the October 1st referendum and the December 2017 elections. The Strasbourg court's decision, supported by Supreme Court Justice Pablo Llarena, found that the three leaders violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights and its protocols. The ruling aligns with the Spanish Constitutional Court's assessment that there was sufficient evidence to suspect serious crimes. This is despite the fact that, as the UN Human Rights Committee stated, the leaders had called on citizens to demonstrate peacefully, and isolated acts of violence could not be attributed to them.

The ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday, which supports the possibility that the Constitutional Court may veto, in certain cases, the processing of motions in favour of the right to self-determination or against the monarchy, has been a bucket of cold water, and there will be time to analyse it. In this article I focus on another issue relating to the ECHR. In the framework of the negotiations between Junts per Catalunya and Pedro Sánchez's executive in Switzerland, on Monday it became known that the Spanish Council of Ministers would approve Spain's accession to Protocol 16 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; Treaty No. 214) immediately. This protocol, which entered into force in August 2018, introduced a significant innovation in the judicial system for the protection of human rights in Europe. Specifically, it allows the highest instances of state courts designated by the Member States to request an advisory opinion from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on questions of principle related to the interpretation or application of the rights and freedoms defined in the Convention. Applications can be made in the context of cases pending before the competent domestic courts, and the ECtHR has the power to accept the application and issue an opinion which is formally non-binding. Although the innovation is significant, it is not comparable with the impact of the preliminary ruling procedure in European Union (EU) law due to the different legal structure of the Protocol No. 16 procedure compared to the preliminary ruling procedure at the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) – the so-called preliminary question, which is binding because the aim is to ensure the supremacy of EU law.

Three current issues of the day. Mazón is already a political corpse, booed in the streets and at events, which he has now, as a desperate measure of self-defense, shown the capture of a security camera from the emergency centre which determines that, in fact, he arrived at around eight thirty in the evening on the day of the DANA, as a way of avoiding responsibility for not having sent the alert earlier by mobile phone because he was not there. It doesn't matter, since the day before yesterday the judge clearly determined that the majority of the 227 dead did not receive any official alert that would probably have saved them, all those who had anything to do with this decision are well trapped, and the head of the trapped is Mazón.

That a court that calls itself a "Human Rights" court should establish that it is proportionate to veto a debate and a vote in parliament on the right to self-determination and the monarchy is the closest thing to a contradiction. Surely, to support their ruling, the European judges have found more solid legal grounds in the Constitution of a pre-existing state and in the jurisprudence of its highest interpreting body than in the attempts to disconnect from a regional Parliament with concealed constituent intentions. But the paradox remains: there is a right for self-determination or the monarchy to be voted on by citizens in an electoral programme but not for them to be voted on by their representatives, even if a parliamentary majority is in favour of it at the polls.