The Balearic government is to refund some 1,800 fines that were imposed during the original state of alarm in 2020. These fines as well as outstanding sanctions that will now not be levied relate to a Supreme Court resolution annulling four Balearic government decrees.
In explaining this to parliament on Tuesday, the minister for public function, Mercedes Garrido, said that the Supreme Court had not entered into an assessment of whether or not fundamental rights had been affected but had referred to a Constitutional Court ruling regarding the powers of regional governments. She insisted that "the government's decrees were endorsed by law at the time they were issued".
Juan Manuel Lafuente of the opposition Partido Popular observed that the two states of alarm were subsequently declared unconstitutional. In his opinion, the PP's request for a pandemic law would have provided legal security and would have prevented citizens from "suffering from unlawful actions of the Balearic government".
Garrido insisted that a pandemic law would not have provided a solution, because it would have had to have gone through the courts, as has been the case in the Balearics before the approval of any new restriction. "Will you tell this to Alberto Núñez Feijoo (PP), who applied all the restrictions of the state of alarm in Galicia?"