In 43 years as a lawyer in the Cortes, Manuel Alba had never publicly commented on a matter in parliamentary proceedings. More than half of that time – 22 years – he has served as general secretary (or senior lawyer, head of legal advice) of both Chambers, first in the Senate (1990-2002) and then in Congress (2004- 2014). He has done it with six different presidencies: three from the PSOE and another three from the PP. Alba, who is still on the team of lawyers, now expresses his indignation at the attacks received by the current secretary general of Congress, Fernando Galindo, attributed by some media to the entire body of lawyers, and by the very harsh report of the legal advice of the Senate disqualifying the procedure with which the amnesty law was processed in Congress. “This lack of institutional respect from the Senate to Congress had never occurred before,” says Alba.
Two words are repeated throughout the conversation: “Never” and “unusual.” And it is not because Alba has not seen situations “of all colors” in her long parliamentary life, in which she has dealt with issues that, like the amnesty now, sparked very heated discussions about its constitutionality: the
Ibarretxe plan
, the Catalan Statute , the equal marriage law, the 2004 reform of the Judiciary... What is new, he considers, is that the atmosphere of extreme polarization has spread to the body of lawyers in the Cortes, and that the parties "force the machine to achieve greater political agreement” of the legal service. Alba has his opinion “as a citizen” about the amnesty law, but he does not want to enter into that substantive debate. His purpose is to emphasize that there has not been the slightest irregularity in the parliamentary processing of the bill: “Congress has acted in strict compliance with the Regulations, with extreme procedural correctness,” he says.
The presence among the lawyers of the Courts of people with political connections does not come from now. Alba remembers that he himself proposed as his deputy a jurist who was the general director of Justice when Ángel Acebes (PP) was minister. What had never happened is that the general secretary - the highest position among lawyers - came to his position directly from the Government and with political activism: Fernando Galindo has a PSOE card and was undersecretary of the Ministry of Territorial Policy when, In October 2023, he was appointed senior lawyer by the president of Congress, the socialist Francina Armengol. “This creates an inconvenience of which the first sufferer has been Galindo himself,” admits Alba. “That said, he is a professionally serious, upright, responsible and competent person, and he has appointed very different people.”
The attacks against Galindo increased in tone after he signed a report favorable to admitting the proposed amnesty law for processing. Alba relates that he did something similar in 2005 regarding the
Ibarretxe plan
, the proposal of the then Lehendakari to give Euskadi the status of a “free associated state.” “The opposition argued that it could not be processed because it was directly unconstitutional,” he says. “I made a report pointing out that it raised doubts of unconstitutionality, although not in all its content, and that if it was inadmissible we were preventing the deputies from being able to express what to do politically with that rule. The deputies also have the right to amendment, they can change it and eliminate unconstitutional aspects. Therefore, the Board, only in extreme, obvious cases—obvious, as the doctrine of the Constitutional Court says—should reject an initiative for processing,” he maintains.
The same thing, he adds, is what the current secretary general, Fernando Galindo, did with the amnesty: “His report favors the right of passive suffrage, that is, the right of deputies to participate in the decision. We are not the Constitutional Court, we cannot assume its functions, we are an advisory body. And those who decide are the Board, the commission and the plenary session, that is, those who have been voted by the citizens."
The veteran jurist is especially critical of the Senate's actions after receiving the law from Congress. The general secretary of the Upper House, renewed when the PP won the absolute majority last July, prepared a report at the request of the president, Pedro Rollán, highlighting that the amnesty law proposal is unconstitutional. “A president has never asked me for such a report. In my opinion, it clearly exceeds the powers of the General Secretariat of the Senate, because it begins to analyze in depth, in an erroneous and biased manner, the processing that has been carried out in Congress. It challenges the entire Congressional procedure with arguments that are misguided, self-serving or directly contrary to the rules. With a series of speculations that do not stand up to the slightest analysis, such as saying that some article of the Congressional Regulations may be unconstitutional. Or qualify as debatable the order of the Constitutional Court that inadmisses Vox's appeal for protection against the decision to return the bill to the Justice Commission after the plenary session rejected it.
The Senate report concludes that what was sent by Congress is “a null text resulting from an irregular procedure.” Given that conclusion, Alba argues, the only “logical and coherent response would have been to inadmiss it.” Instead, the Upper House has given effect to it, at the same time raising a jurisdictional conflict with Congress: it alleges that the law amounts to a reform of the Constitution and as such usurps functions of the Senate. “There is no such conflict of powers,” says the former secretary general of both Chambers. “Congress has processed a bill and you have it on the table. "You can disallow it, recommend that it be vetoed, or suggest that it be amended."
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