The Constitutional Court, in its ruling of 2 November 2015, declared the fundamental right to effective legal protection, enshrined in Article 24 of the Spanish Constitution, to have been breached by a ruling of the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country of the 19 June 2012, where the judicial authority dismissed the approach of a question of unconstitutionality regarding Provincial Legislation 14/1991, of the province of Gipuzkoa, that imposed on that territory the obligation to pay the Wealth Tax when that tax had been abolished in the rest of Spain. The High Court argued that the court of first instance had erred in its reasoning, with a breach of that fundamental right, by dismissing the approach of a question of unconstitutionality by applying the provisions contained in Additional Provision 5 of the Organic Law 2/1979, in the wording approved by Organic Law 1/2010. As is generally known, the analysis of the constitutionality of the precepts of the organic law that enshrined the so-called “armour-plating” of the provincial legislation is pending after the appeal lodged by different Autonomous Communities.

Ruling of the Constitutional Court