The Court of First Instance and Instruction No. 2 of Melilla has ordered Ciudadanos to reinstate as a member the former president of Melilla and former coordinator of the party in the autonomous city, Eduardo de Castro, who was expelled from the party in March 2021 According to the ruling, the judge confirms the lawsuit filed by De Castro, 66, and annuls the decision of the Commission for Disciplinary Regimes of the CS that approved the exclusion, as well as another decision of the Commission for Guarantees, issued almost four months later, which confirmed this sanction. The judgment, which is not final and can be appealed within 20 days, orders Cs to reinstate De Castro “in his capacity as a member” and orders the party to pay the costs. De Castro, now independent, continued to serve as the city’s president until the last elections on May 28, in which he did not take part.
The court in Melilla is thus responding to the requests of De Castro, who was president of the autonomous city of Melilla between June 2019 and August 2023, in a coalition government of the CS with the Coalition for Melilla (CPM) and the PSOE. He joined Cs in 2014 and topped their electoral list for the Melilla Assembly in both 2015 and 2019. He was expelled under a disciplinary record agreed by the formation’s Commission on Disciplinary Regimes “for not notifying the party of a criminal allegation.” ” because of “the allegedly irregular relocation of the youth center”. The case was dismissed.
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The former president of Melilla appealed to the CS Guarantee Commission, which dismissed the appeal and confirmed the sanction. Therefore, he decided to go to court and argue, among other things, the “inadmissible creation of the body imposing the sanction” and the fact that the figure of the secretary and the teacher were not separate.
De Castro also defended a violation of the rules of the sanctions procedure and called for the annulment of the decision not only for lack of motivation, but also because he considered that it violated the principle of proportionality, as well as the principle of legality and the presumption of the Innocence.
The judge points out in the ruling that the agreement opening the disciplinary file “does not detail the rights supporting De Castro” and “highlights the lack of any communication about the possibility of challenging the instructor.”
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According to the ruling, the absence of the rights granted to the person against whom a case is opened in the initiation agreement is “particularly serious in this case”, since De Castro was suspended from the militancy and deprived of the right of access to the party program became .
In addition, “De Castro was deprived of the opportunity to raise allegations regarding the proposed order because he was not notified,” the judge adds in her ruling, in which she considers that “contrary to the specific rules governing the sanctions procedure , was violated”.
“These violations constitute a violation of the provisions of Article 8.3 of Law 6/2002 on political parties,” says the judgment, which annuls the exclusion decision of the Disciplinary Commission of the Cs as two regulations regulating the sanction procedure.