Constitutional Court accepts for consideration appeal to anti-monarchy motion

The Spanish Constitutional Court has accepted for consideration the appeal against the anti-monarchy motion passed by the Catalan Parliament in October.

The text condemned king Felipe and urged the abolition of the institution he leads.

Yet the judges did not rule a precautionary suspension of the motion while taking a final decision on its legality, as they usually do.

The reason is that the Spanish government took the resolution to the court one month ago, but did not request such provisional suspension.

Madrid’s executive’s spokeswoman claimed that the motion is a “serious violation of the principle of constitutional loyalty,” and also one step to continue a “unilateral independence roadmap towards the proclamation of a republic."

Motion against king

The motion was proposed by the left-wing Catalunya en Comú-Podem (CatECP) coalition and passed with votes from Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) and Esquerra Republicana (ERC), the two main pro-independence parties and government partners.

The parties that voted in favor of the motion criticized King Felipe VI for his speech on October 3, 2017, in which he took the Catalan government to task for organizing a referendum on independence that had been deemed illegal, and made no mention of police violence against voters.

The resolution also reasserted support for “republican values" and the abolishing of “an outdated and anti-democratic institution like the monarchy."