Like a Swiss watch. In a state where nothing seems to work, where the disagreements between coalition partners PSOE and Unidas Podemos are growing, and, if that were not enough, within the government palace itself, a campaign has begun to kneecap one of its own ministers, Alberto Garzón, creating scandal out of statements he never made, all in order to align the PSOE with the discourse of the right - and with all this going on, the only thing that carries on functioning with Germanic precision is the persecution of the Catalan independence movement. The departure of the expired members of the previous Court of Accounts, with that ineffable justice minister from the José María Aznar government with a resonant name, Margarita Mariscal de Gante, who was its president, has given way to another selection, also agreed between the PSOE and the opposition PP, which, following the path of the previous tribunal, has not needed much time at all to reactivate the case against the Catalan governments of Artur Mas and Carles Puigdemont. A total of 5.4 million euros are claimed for the foreign promotion of Catalonia between 2010 and 2017.
We have said it before on more than one occasion: no discourse by the Spanish government will be credible, nor its statements about wanting to turn a page, while judicial persecution continues and the powers of the state dedicate themselves to the imprisonment and financial ruin of Catalan independence supporters. In this case, moreover, it is not a judicial court, such as the High Court of Catalonia or the Supreme Court, but an intermediate body to which the political parties nominate politicians so that a ghostly Court of Accounts can act as a halfway-house institution. So spectral is the Court of Accounts that nothing, or almost nothing, has been known about it for years. The only issue that caused it to appear in the media was when it revoked the conviction of the former mayor of Madrid, Ana Botella, for the mass sale of social housing, when previously the auditing body's trial section had calculated damages of 25.8 million euros to the Spanish capital's municipal housing company. Well, that ruling, when it was escalated to higher levels, came to nothing and, coincidentally, Aznar's former justice minister was at the helm.
Thus the institution emerged out of its murkiness to pursue the foreign promotion of Catalonia, a governmental area that is recognized in Catalonia's Statute of Autonomy, but which has now been presented as illegal, linked to the independence process. And the PSOE also plays a role, by preaching about a dialogue with the pro-independence government which is non-existent, while constantly seeking the support of congressional deputies belonging to pro-independence parties. There is no point in coming to Catalonia with a soft-shoe discourse while using heavy artillery in the Court of Accounts against two former Catalan presidents and around thirty high-ranking officials, including vice president Oriol Junqueras and ministers Andreu Mas-Colell, Raül Romeva and Francesc Homs.
To try to stop the economic targeting of the defendants as if they were sitting ducks, the Catalan minister of economy, Jaume Giró, devised a fund that would be able to finance their bail guarantees through the Catalan Institute of Finance. Without prompting any recourse from the Spanish government, and receiving the endorsement of the constitutionality review body, the Council of Statutory Guarantees, and passed with a very large parliamentary majority - supported by the left-wing Comuns and the Catalan Socialists abstained - the expired Court of Accounts rejected it. It was the last cartridge in the chamber before the renewal of the body's composition. Now, with new members, but a similar political dependence, it has decided to reactivate the whole procedure against the Catalan government. It's damned hard to do politics under these conditions.