The TC magistrate who was in favor of not imposing 25% of Spanish will refrain from appealing against the measure

When the decision is formalized, the court will decide who will replace Díez to take charge of the presentation

MADRID, 19 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The magistrate of the Constitutional Court (TC) Laura Díez --proposed by the Government-- will refrain from writing the paper that had been commissioned to her on the unconstitutionality appeals presented by the PP and Ciudadanos against the Catalan law that eliminates 25% of Spanish in the classrooms, since last summer she signed opinions of the Council of Statutory Guarantees of Catalonia, in her capacity as vice-president, in favor of not imposing said percentage of Spanish in the classrooms of the autonomous community.

Sources from the guarantee body confirm to Europa Press that the magistrate has agreed that she will abstain from the matter. As they specify, Díez will not be able to formalize this decision until the distribution of the papers is made effective, which, as a rule, does not happen until its publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE), which took place this Thursday.

The same sources explain that the abstention will have to be formalized before the court and, later, it must be approved by the Constitutional Plenary. Only later will it be determined on which magistrate the matter will fall.

Next week the court will hold a plenary session in which, among other issues, it will begin deliberation on a matter related to the question of unconstitutionality raised by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia on the Catalan law that eliminates 25% of Spanish in the classrooms. According to the sources, the magistrate will also refrain from said deliberation.

Díez, as recorded on the website of the Generalitat's Statutory Guarantees Council itself, signed opinion 3/2022, on the proposed law on the use and learning of official languages ​​for non-university education; and opinion 4/2022, on Decree-Law 6/2022 in which it establishes the criteria for the elaboration of the linguistic projects of the educational centers.

As reported by the Constitutional Court at the beginning of the week, Díez had been designated as the person responsible for writing the presentation on the appeals presented by the deputies of the PP and Citizens against the Decree-law of Catalonia 6/2022, by which they set the criteria for preparing the linguistic projects of educational centers, and against the law of Catalonia 8/2022, on the use and learning of official languages ​​in non-university education.

This presentation, which was in the hands of the outgoing magistrate Antonio Narváez, fell to Díez after the president of the court, magistrate Cándido Conde-Pumpido, delivered the presentations that were in charge of the magistrates who left the Constitutional Court on January 9 after the partial renovation of the organ.

It was on June 7, 2022 when Díez, as vice-president of the Council of Statutory Guarantees of the Generalitat, signed opinion 3/2022, in which it is concluded --unanimously-- that the law on the use and learning of the official languages ​​in non-university education "does not violate" the Constitution or the Statute, nor with regard to the omission of declaring Spanish as the vehicular language or the curricular and educational use of Catalan and Spanish without establishing percentages.

Opinion 3/2022 maintained that the requirement to establish a minimum percentage of 25% of Spanish as the language of use in non-university education, set by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia in 2020, was not a "parameter of constitutionality or of statutory nature" that binds the legislator and, therefore, obliges him to "respect it".

In the text it was highlighted that the Constitutional Court -of which Díez is now a part- "explicitly" had not considered unconstitutional a law that does not contain the express declaration of Castilian as the vehicular language.

The opinion also insisted that the guarantee body had ensured that omitting the mention of Spanish as the vehicular language was not unconstitutional because it did not imply the exclusion of Spanish as the teaching language.

In turn, it was underlined that the basic state legislation on education "never", except for the period in which the LOMCE was in force (from December 30, 2013 to January 19, 2021), had declared Spanish as vehicular language.

Regarding the fact that Spanish and Catalan are used in Catalonia without establishing percentages, the Council of Statutory Guarantees also stressed that it was endorsed by the Constitution.

The body concluded that it had been "naturally admitted" that the treatment of languages ​​was "different in the various educational systems that exist in the autonomous communities", which translated into "multiple linguistic models of teaching, all considered legitimate by constitutional doctrine. In this case, the Council endorsed that Catalan be placed as the "center of gravity of the educational system".

Díez signed the opinion in which it was maintained that it was "easily verifiable" that "neither the Constitution, nor the Statute of Autonomy, nor the basic legislation of the State (...), nor the Catalan legislation, nor the Constitutional Court in the multiple occasions in which they have interpreted all these norms have at no time established the requirement of specific percentages in the distribution of the use of the official languages ​​in education and not even another similar one".

In this sense, the Council indicated that the linguistic treatment in non-university education on the basis of determined percentages between the official languages ​​was a "legitimate educational policy option, although not the only possible one".

Days later, on June 20, 2022, Díez signed -also as vice president- opinion 4/2022 of the Council of Statutory Guarantees approved unanimously in which it was concluded that the law establishing the applicable criteria to the elaboration, approval, validation and revision of the linguistic projects of the educational centers - regarding the omission of the declaration of Castilian as the vehicular language - "does not violate" neither the Constitution nor the Statute.

Within the framework of this opinion, the body stressed that the fact that the Catalan law 6/2022 only mentions Catalan as the vehicular language of education "is not unconstitutional and does not imply in any case the exclusion of Spanish as a language teacher".