Read in Catalan

It is obvious that the five million euros deposit that the former Catalan president, Artur Mas, has been asked to pay for the participatory process of 9th November 2014, along with other members of the government at the time, as well as more than half a dozen of intermediate positions of the Catalan administration, responds above all to a strategy of fear accurately designed to overthrow Catalan independence. First is the moment chosen for the announcement by the National Audit Court: the eve of the approval of the Law of the Referendum and that of the Transitional Jurisprudence and Foundation of the Republic on the part of the Catalan Parliament, and immediately afterwards the signing of the decree for the call of the referendum of 1st October on the part of the Catalan government. Then the moment arrives in which the deposit has to be deposited: on 25th September, just six days before the announced referendum.

Although in the current spiral of news, things tend to be forgotten, it is worth remembering that both the Supreme as well as the TSJC (High Court of Justice of Catalonia) have already judged the case of those involved in the 9-N vote, and misappropriation remained out of the crimes for which they were condemned. The National Audit Court was improvised once the Spanish government ascertained that there was no reversal in the referendum committed to by the Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, and that the alliance with the vice president, Oriol Junqueras, was solid enough to not derail the entire Catalan process. It was at this moment, when politics came back to intervene and to judge the organisers of the 9-N vote for a different route again, and also to launch the so-called 'Operation Patrimony' (seizure of assets). None of the past and present collaborators would remain safe and sound from first the penal persecution, and then the patrimonial one.

The strong response offered by Puigdemont and Junqueras once the deposit of five million was known, places Catalan independentism, the parties, the organisations and the civic entities that promote the referendum, in a new situation, but it will allow it to show its muscle in a test that it has not had to overcome until now: is it able to raise enough money through private contributions to face the deposit imposed by the National Audit Office? If this is the case, then independentism will demonstrate that in addition to taking to the street every time it is summoned, in addition to the massive vote of 9-N, in addition to granting the parliamentary majority to Junts pel Sí (Together for Yes) and the CUP (Popular Unity Candidacy), in addition to delivering the government on a tray towards the referendum, in addition to all this, it is also capable of dealing in a solidary way with an astronomical deposit.

The Spanish government will see in the next few hours that its political inaction during these years in the Catalan issue has ended up incurring a very high cost for its interests, and especially for those Catalans who had put their confidence in it. One day, the ex-president, Artur Mas, said that Catalonia has started a path towards the unknown. The truth is that the members of the Catalan government who met this Tuesday in the Palau of the Generalitat for an ordinary session of the Executive may not have been collectively as aware of the scope of the day this Wednesday as in those hours of the morning. And sometimes the story is written in big headlines but it is done in meetings such as the last Executive Board.