The Constitutional Court of Spain has found that the decree by which the second state of alarm regarding Covid-19 was put in place in the country to be unconstitutional.
It is the third ruling against the legal strategy adopted by the Spanish government to roll out measures dealing with Covid virus. The ‘state of alarm’ was in force between November 9, 2020 and May 9, 2021. The previous rulings also found the first state of alarm and the stoppage of Congress during the beginning of the crisis unconstitutional.
The case was taken by the political party Vox who argued that the Covid measures represented an unjustified reduction of parliamentary control of the Government.
In a preview of the ruling on Wednesday, the court said Spain’s central government illegally overtook some of the power from the country’s regional authorities.
Last July, the court had ruled that Spain’s first state of emergency, which led to one of the strictest lockdowns in the Western world, also violated the country’s Constitution.
As a result, the Spanish government said it will pay back the 1.1 million fines it collected from citizens breaking rules during the first lockdown in the spring of last year.
The Spanish daily El Mundo, said that more than 40,000 fines were issued during the second state of alarm, bolstering the state treasury by around €69 million ($79.9). Calls are being made for those fines to be similarly refunded.