The decision of the High Court of Catalonia (TSJC) to open a trial for the MPs Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó for misuse of public funds during the organization of the Catalan referendum of October 1st 2017 has triggered one of those absurd debates about whether the two must continue to be parliamentarians or, on the contrary, if the regulations intended to punish corruption must be applied. Catalan politics sometimes has these debates, in which senseless controversies are whipped up by asserting equivalences between situations that have nothing in common, such as the comparison that one might make between this case and that of the suspended speaker of the Catalan Parliament, Laura Borràs.
With the public prosecutor's indictment, we learned that the two current Republican Left (ERC) deputies, who in 2017 were senior officials in the Catalan economy ministry, are to be prosecuted for disobedience, abuse of authority, misuse of public funds and disclosure of secrets. The trial has no date, but the court to hear it is already known, and will consist of the president of the TSJC, Jesús María Barrientos, and judges Carlos Ramos and Fernando Lacaba. The prosecutor's brief has already been drawn up by the corresponding prosecutors of the TSJC and has been notified to the Spanish public prosecutors' office, as is usual in this type of case, for its analysis and approval.
As I already argued with respect to the Supreme Court trial of the nine Catalan political prisoners, who were sentenced to just on a hundred years in prison for sedition, misuse of funds and disobedience, and for the same number of years to a ban on taking part on everything related to the holding of the referendum, the only offence which should be part of the court's debate in the case is that of disobedience, also taking into account those cases where prior notification by the courts had occurred. There was no sedition and no misuse of funds. The first crime is no longer even contemplated in the reform of the Spanish Penal Code, which is now being studied for its modification and which provides for the elimination of the crime.
In the case of misuse of funds, the crime is not applicable for another reason as well: because there is no lucrative benefit. In fact, the Spanish finance minister at the time, Cristóbal Montoro, insisted that no public money at all had been used to prepare the referendum. There was, therefore, no damage to the assets administered and at the most there could be an argument over whether the money should have been invested in these purposes, but there is no misuse of funds because it was not administered disloyally.
This is the road map used by those who took part in the events of October 2017 and Jové and Salvadó can be welcomed into it as well without any doubt. Let's leave the partisan struggle for other battlegrounds and try to preserve all the public servants that the state seeks to persecute. And let's remember that the level of repression is still very high, since the dejudicialization which has been called for will never come to anything if the other party continues to treat events as crimes when they are not.