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A leak via the news agency Europa Press that Spain's Constitutional Court had devised a strategy so that all appeals lodged by the Catalan political prisoners would get bogged down in legal bureaucracy to prevent them from reaching the European Court of Human Rights before Spain's Supreme Court had given its sentence on the case​, prompted a major wave of protests on Sunday from judicial circles and, naturally, from the lawyers who defended the pro-independence leaders. This was not a matter of one nor half a dozen appeals, but a total of around fifty defence submissions made to the court, asserting the prisoners' rights to constitutional protection. A situation which, for example, Andreu Van den Eynde, lawyer to Oriol Junqueras, described as very serious; he explained that with this information it could be understood how the Constitutional Court took two years to rule on the appeal against his client's provisional prison, thus rendering it meaningless.

The Constitutional Court cannot simply remain silent in the face of the publication of such disgraceful news. It is one thing that we all see the delay and even start to form suspicions, and quite another that, as Joaquín Urias says, a judicial body establishes a strategy to prevent the internationalization of the Supreme Court's judgment. For El Nacional's columnist Joan Queralt, the Constitutional Court's delays stood out like a sore thumb, and the ad hoc approach used paints a phantasmal portrait of the rule of law in Spain. We could go on, as there are many other legal professionals who have spoken up on the issue.

The resumption of the parliamentary session in Madrid must be used by the pro-independence parties to try and get to the bottom of this matter. Both Spanish chambers have a constitutional committee as a permanent legislative sub-organ. The Catalan government should also demand an explanation from the Constitutional Court as, if this is confirmed, the injustice is clamorous and the breach of the prisoners' right to a fair defence, manifest.