The decision by the Appeals Chamber of the Spanish Supreme Court confirming the pretrial detention without bail of Carme Forcadell, Jordi Turull, Josep Rull, Raül Romeva and Dolors Bassa, five of the nine Catalan political prisoners in Madrid jails (they'd already ruled on the other four - the Jordis, Junqueras and Forn) means, in practice, that the most probable scenario for them all is that the unjust and inhuman deprivation of liberty, more than a thousand kilometres there and back from their families, will stretch out until the trial. In other words, that the tougher position of the Spanish judiciary is the one gaining ground and that European justice can do what it wants with the exiled Catalan politicians, that it won't have an effect on its ultimate decision.
We'll see if the trial will be in the autumn/winter, which is the most likely, or will now jump to 2019, but after the pronouncement from the court's Appeals Chamber it's improbable to expect the prisoners' current situation to change before the hearing. That this decision should be announced less than 24 hours after Belgian justice refused to extradite ministers Comín, Serret and Puig is nothing more than a demonstration of a certain arrogance from Spanish justice, incapable of accepting that the investigation carried out was poor and that the alleged crimes attributed to the suspects -rebellion and misuse of public funds- are utterly inconsistent.
The geographic border of the Pyrenees is today something more than a mountain range. It's a different way of interpreting the law and, ultimately, of imparting justice. It shouldn't be like that. In that regard, the comment from the Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, after the decision on the exiled ministers that justice is independent in his country, is as obvious as it is a message for those states where it isn't so. As it is never not presumptuous for the Supreme Court to tell German justice to not make the same mistake with president Puigdemont as Belgian justice with the exiled ministers.
This is a time when the rest of the political structure is moving as one and has started on a certain auction to get the greatest reward from Spanish nationalism: Rivera is going to the Moncloa government palace to ask for a new article 155 which includes control of Catalan finances, public media and police (the Mossos d'Esquadra) and Pedro Sánchez, not to be outdone, wants it to be required by law that high-ranking officials accept the Constitution in public and that the Penal Code is modified to adapt to the independence supporters' actions. Surprisingly, in this competition, even Rajoy can stay quiet as others are already doing the work.