MADRID, 31 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Government Spokesperson Minister, Isabel Rodríguez, has moved away from the decision on the date and organization of the promise or oath of the Constitution that the Princess of Asturias, who has just turned 17, must make when she comes of age. “In politics, almost like in life, a year is an eternity,” she commented at the press conference after the Congress of Ministers.
After congratulating Leonor de Borbón for her 17th birthday this Monday, the minister said that she trusted that, at the time, the Chambers will decide how to proceed to comply with this constitutional precept and has only expressed her wish that, by then, there will be someone “at the head of the PP who is complying with the Constitution”, in another attack on Alberto Núñez Feijóo for the failure of the negotiations to renew the Judicial Power.
The date and organization of that oath depends on the date of the general elections due to the possibility that on October 21, 2023 he will turn 18 with the Cortes dissolved pending the elections.
A report from the lawyers of Congress indicated a possibility of combining elections at the end of 2023 with the celebration of the oath or promise of the Constitution before the General Courts in full. To do this, President Pedro Sánchez would have to give up advancing the elections and let the Cortes automatically dissolve on November 10.
The document, to which Europa Press has had access, is signed by Manuel Delgado-Iribarren, a lawyer from the Joint Commission for the European Union, a body that will participate in the events that will be organized within the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the EU, which will take place in the second half of 2023.
The report maintains that, if there is no early election, the general elections would have to be held no later than December 10, 2023. Usually, the President of the Government dissolves the Cortes 54 days before the date of the elections, but it is not necessary do so because there is the option of letting the Chambers’ mandate run out.
According to article 68.4 of the Constitution, this mandate ends four years after the election of the Chambers or the day of dissolution, that is, if there is no decree of dissolution, the mandate will end on November 10, 2023, given that the last generals were on November 10, 2019.
Thus, if the early dissolution does not occur, “the decree calling (for the elections) must be signed on Monday, October 16, 2023, coming into force after publication in the BOE the following day and the elections must be held on Sunday, December 10 “says the report.
If this formula of “calling elections due to the expiration of the mandate of the Chambers” is chosen, the document states, “between October 16 and November 10, 2023 (when its mandate would end) the Chambers maintain all their powers constitutional”.
That is to say, in those weeks the Courts could continue approving laws and celebrating their ordinary activity. And, therefore, they could also host the oath ceremony of compliance with the Constitution of the heiress on October 31, coinciding with her access to the age of majority. In this way, the model of her father, the former Prince Felipe, who took the oath on his eighteenth birthday, would be repeated.
If this is finally the chosen option, the electoral campaign and the voting itself will take place in the final stretch of the Spanish Presidency of the European Union, which will end on December 31, 2023. Of course, from December 10 the Government would already be in office.
