National
Constitutional Court in the news in Spain
By h.b.
Mar 13, 2008 - 8:25 AM

There’s controversial news from the courts of Madrid today.
The Constitutional Court has removed two conservative judges from the so-called ‘Organic Law’ case, following an appeal from the Government after the voting record of the judges, Roberto García-Calvo and Jorge Rodríguez Zapata, was put under scrutiny.

The judges will now have no voice or vote in the hearing which comes following an appeal placed by the Partido Popular in challenge to the extension granted in the mandate of the President of the Constitutional Court, María Emilia Casas, and Vice President, Guillermo Jímenez, whose terms would otherwise have been completed last December. The two judges have been sidelined by a vote of six for, and two against, in the chamber.

The fight over who holds the Presidency of the Constitutional Court is seen as important given the fact that six of the judges are considered to be progressive and the other six, conservative.
Over the next few months the chamber has to hear a series appeals placed before it by the Partido Popular, including those against gay marriage, the national water plan, and the new Catalan statute.

Meanwhile, a hearing in the Penal Hall of the National Court in Madrid has been cancelled because those accused could not speak in Catalan during the trial. The two accused, Enric Stern and Jaume Roura, faced charges of having set light to a photograph of the King last November, were fined 2,700 € and are now appealing against that sentence.

Both the men insisted in declaring in Catalan, even though the judge, José María Vázquez Honrubia, ordered them to speak in Castellano. After two hours of debate yesterday most of the magistrates considered that the inability of the two to declare in Catalan went against their defence rights.

Judicial sources quoted by the El Mundo newspaper, said that they did not know the extent of the effect of this decision on the use of different languages in the National Court in the future.