Good news again from Europe. From Belgium this time, specifically from the Court of Appeal of Ghent, which maintained its refusal to extradite Mallorcan rapper Josep Miquel Arenas, Valtònyc, sentenced by the Spanish Supreme Court to three and a half years in prison for criminal threats, glorification of terrorism and insults to the Crown. A new defeat of the Spanish judiciary in Europe, this time, not for issues related to Catalan independence but for a textbook case that affects freedom of expression: the lyrics of some songs of the Majorcan rapper. The lesson is always the same: while the Spanish judiciary condemns people for non-existent crimes, beyond the Pyrenees the result is very different. Spain's international shame is thus acquiring unthinkable dimensions, and what is most surprising is how the entire political, economic, judicial and media networks have accepted it a though it were perfectly normal. Furthermore, the self-proclaimed “most progressive government in history”, petrified, witnesses the shameful spectacle of degradation of basic values in any democracy without offering any kind of political or legislative solution.
Over a thousand days have passed since Valtònyc decided to internationalize his cause, to go into exile in Belgium and put himself at the disposal of the courts. In addition to an unjust exile, he had to deal with his mother’s death in Mallorca in early 2021, whom he buried via Skype. From that decision, obviously hard as any kind of exile is, stemmed two more, that caused an important turnaround. Firstly, the Spanish Supreme Court's conviction for the lyrics of a song in which he said that Juan Carlos I was a thief raised an interesting legal debate in Belgium, about what was understood as an insult to the Crown in the 21st century. The conclusion was the deletion from the Belgian Criminal Code of the “insults to the Crown” crime, which dated back to 1847. Having overcome this obstacle, the court rejected the extradition requested by the Spanish Supreme Court.
No matter how many times it is said, it will never be enough: nothing would have been as obvious, nor would the actions of the Spanish judiciary have been so glaringly clear to international public opinion, were it not for the exile of a group of men and women who have shed light in the midst of the darkest night. The Spanish Supreme Court would not have been unmasked, and it would not be possible to affirm without any possible margin of error that what has taken place in Spain has been a full-fledged judicial persecution to put an end to any kind of dissidence. First it was political, against the Catalan independence movement, but from then on, the silence and weakness of the Spanish government has allowed the so-called deep state to take over the story, to play its own suicidal game in which anything goes in defence of the unity of Spain and the Crown.
This December 28th, once celebrated as April Fool's Day, when jokes in the media were the order of the day, would be a good time to remember that there were countless front pages published predicting that Valtònyc would end up in prison, since his conviction was firm. It was not an April Fool’s Joke when they said it in their first pages, it was glaringly obvious fake news. The fact that the ruling by the Court of Appeal of Ghent was passed in the midst of the debate on the return of the former king to Spain, which is now scheduled for mid-February, is still a malevolent trick of history. The fugitive king, on whom there is the most obvious evidence of corruption, will be able to return freely to Spain, among other things, due to of the apathy of the Spanish judiciary. On the other hand, Valtònyc will have to continue living abroad even though the Belgian court has denied his extradition.
It is not surprising that people feel alienated from Spanish institutions. Between the Spanish left’s ostentatious silence on a clear case of freedom of expression and the protection of the monarchy from any kind of political investigation, a most unpleasant panorama is emerging.