The senior lawyer who opposed the amnesty in Congress leaves and Armengol looks for a replacement

The senior lawyer of the Cortes Generales, Carlos Gutiérrez, has asked to leave office after nine and a half years at the head of the legal team. This is corroborated by various parliamentary sources to this newspaper.. Gutiérrez wants to step aside and has made this known to the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, who is already looking for a replacement for him.

This position, also called general secretary of the Congress of Deputies, is of vital importance for the future of parliamentary activity, due to the important role played by lawyers.. Above all, in terms of legal and technical advice. They resolve possible doubts that the Presidency, the Board or the deputies may have.. In addition, they issue non-binding reports and opinions on the rules, agreements and actions of Congress.. His refereeing role is not minor.

Among the possible substitutes that are being considered in the internal “pools” of the legal team of the Lower House, Mercedes Araújo, currently attached to Gutiérrez, stands out.. The name of Mercedes Cabrera Orejas, general director of Relations with the Courts in the Ministry of the Presidency, has also been used, but the sources consulted do not see her with options because it would imply a greater share of power for Minister Félix Bolaños. At least two other people surveyed have rejected the position. One of them, José Antonio Moreno, the opto assistant to the senior lawyer.

Five years old

The Regulation states that general secretaries must have more than five years of seniority as Cortes lawyers.. Armengol (PSOE) will have to choose his legal right hand at a time of tensions in the Board, after the four members of the PP complained about his decision to declare “null” the erroneous vote – later corrected – of Eduard Pujol in the Feijóo investiture vote. Furthermore, the PP is accusing the president of the Chamber of blocking its initiatives and of having implemented the use of co-official languages before approving it.

Hence the importance of the figure of the senior lawyer at the current time.. Not in vain, we must remember that Gutiérrez signed a very clear report against the amnesty in 2021, and his departure could occur before another opinion has to be prepared on a new bill for amnesty for the crimes of the process.. The fact that Gutiérrez already asked Meritxell Batet to leave office confirms that the general secretary of Congress is not leaving for this reason. It simply coincides in time.

Two and a half years ago, in March 2021, the Congressional Committee examined an organic law proposal from ERC, Junts, PdeCAT and the CUP to wipe the slate clean on all crimes “of political intention” since 2013.

The lawyers of Congress, led by Carlos Gutiérrez, forcefully rejected the norm by ensuring that it entered into a “glaring contradiction” with the Constitution.. Specifically, with article 62, which prohibits “general pardons”. With that report in hand, the PSOE voted against the processing of the measure and, then, dried up any possibility of a general amnesty.

In fact, the PSOE leaders who are negotiating the possible amnesty have this report very much in mind and are trying to ensure that the amnesty is not a general pardon, but rather a kind of agreement with “conditionality” in which the independentists commit to “security.” legal». For now, this obstacle has not been overcome.