The magistrate of the Constitutional Court (TC) José María Macías has formally requested in a letter to the president of the body, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, that with the more than 50 challenges that have been formulated against the members of the court of guarantees in the challenges to The amnesty law follows the same procedure as with the abstentions of Juan Carlos Campo, to achieve a “neutral” result, according to the legal sources consulted by Europa Press. According to the Constitutional Court itself, the amnesty law has already broken a record in the number of challenges against magistrates, a total of 54 that are distributed in a block of 27 against the progressive magistrates Conde-Pumpido, Laura Díez and Campo – with 9 each one– and another block of as many against Macías, framed in the conservative sector of the TC. Campo voluntarily departed from the 20 issues related to the amnesty because when he was Minister of Justice he said that the pardon measure was “clearly unconstitutional” in the reports in favor of pardoning those convicted of the ‘procés’. On September 11, the TC unanimously ratified its abstention on the question of unconstitutionality raised by the Supreme Court (TS), the first matter that reached Plenary. After that, Conde-Pumpido decided to accumulate the other 19 Campo abstentions to resolve them in one fell swoop in the next Plenary Session, applying the unanimous criterion that was adopted with the first, in order to accelerate the management of amnesty matters. This way of proceeding aroused discomfort in the conservative wing of the TC, which is why its five magistrates voted against the total removal of Campo on September 24. In a private vote, Macías denounced that there was an “irregular” composition of the Plenary, considering that neither he nor the other challenged magistrates – Conde-Pumpido and Díez – should have participated in the debate until the objections made against them were resolved. each one of them. Looking ahead to the next Plenary Session, which is scheduled to begin on October 8, a new controversy has broken out within the TC due to Conde-Pumpido’s decision — “a majority of magistrates were consulted,” according to sources from the body. – to resolve one by one the three pending challenges in the following matter on the amnesty (the appeal of unconstitutionality of the PP), and to ask Díez and Macías that none of the three participate in the deliberation on theirs. Thus, a plenary session made up of four progressive magistrates – all except Conde-Pumpido, Díez and Campo – and as many conservatives – all except Macías – will decide next week on the recusal against the president of the TC. In the next plenary session, Díez’s decision will be seen and, in subsequent conclaves, the admission for processing of the ‘popular’ appeal and the recusal against Macías, in this order, according to the aforementioned sources. THE ‘FIELD GUIDELINE’ Some voices from the court of guarantees denounce that this is a new change in the rules of the game on the fly that will allow, if the challenge against Conde-Pumpido is rejected, he will participate in the deliberations on the directed against Díez and Macías. This chronological order could lead to the two progressive magistrates being part of the Plenary that decides on their conservative colleague without him having intervened in the others. This is precisely what Macías seeks to avoid. According to the sources consulted, he has asked Conde-Pumpido not to divide the analysis of the challenges to guarantee that the result is “neutral.” He proposes that in the same plenary session a challenge of each of the three magistrates who have pending blemishes – the president of the TC, Díez and him – be resolved without their participation. And that what was decided be applied in a subsequent plenary session following the ‘Field guideline’. In response to Macías’ request, other voices from the TC argue that, precisely, there has been a move towards the model that the conservative bloc defended during the Plenary Session of September 24 in which all of Campo’s abstentions were endorsed. In any case, both sectors agree that it is a ‘tempo’ problem. While the accumulation of abstentions and challenges would speed up the processing of the amnesty, the individualization of each incident will delay the procedures. Despite this, the court of guarantees is confident that within a period of six months to a year it can rule on the law.