ABSTRACT
DECISION OF THE SPANISH CONSTITUTIONAL COURT 50/1999,
The
Constitutional Court has decided the partial allowance of two accumulative
appeals for uncostitutionality, num. 521/1993 and
547/1993, respectively submitted by the Board of Counsellors
of Castilla y León and the Generalitat of Catalonia, against several dispositions of
the Act 30/1992, 26th November, on the juridical System of Public Administrations,
and on the Common Administrative Procedures.
According
to article 36.2 of the aforementioned legal text, any document issued by an
Autonomous Community which may be effective in other Autonomous Communities,
should be translated into Spanish. Likewise, article 36.3 states that any files
coming from Autonomous Communities with an official language other than Spanish
should also be translated into Spanish by the corresponding instructive Public
Administration.
Such
legal provisions were reformed by means of the 4/1999 Act, 13th January, on the
modification of the 30/1992 Act, which regulation states the unnnecessary translation of documents in those cases in
which both of the implied communities share the same official language.
Nonetheless,
the Generalitat of Catalonia's claim for
unconstitutionality (article 3.2 of the Spanish Constitution) still refers to
these articles in relation to their validity concerning the documentation
issued after the enforcement of the law, and the obligation to translate any
document in any case, as well as in relation to the contravening of the Catalan
Statute of Autonomy concerning the obligatory translation into Spanish of those
documents effective in two Autonomous Communities sharing the same official
language. The decision of the
1)
The subparagraph included in article 17.1, so as articles 23.1, 23.2, 24.1,
24.2, 24.3, 25.2, 25.3, 27.2, 27.3 and 27.5 do not have a basic nature, by which
they are all contrary to the constitutional order of competences;
2)
The second paragraph of article 36.2, and article 36.3
of the aforementioned law are constitutional;
3)
Dismissal of the rest of the appeal's contents.
In
relation to this decision, there is a dissenting vote made with respect to the
interpretation of the decision
Madrid, 6th April, 1999.