Spanish judge Pablo Llarena does not want to try Catalan president Carles Puigdemont for misuse of funds alone, and the Supreme Court has leaked that the best option is to withdraw the extradition order. The Spanish right does not accept the Schleswig-Holstein regional court's decision and has leapt into a proposal to pull the country out of the Schengen Area. The Europeanism of the heirs of the Franco regime is just a posture, everyone knows that. The Spanish right has never been Europeanist or constitutionalist. In order to be either of them it has had to distort both.
For this reason, the idea of a Spain with hard borders once again is emerging with strength. Just as a few months ago there was a campaign against the perfidious Germany, when an earlier extradition decision had failed to deliver Puigdemont. Judge Llarena has been discredited by European justice. Stung by his German, Belgian and Swiss colleagues, with the response of Scottish justice also on the way. But along with Llarena, politicians and journalists are falling, arrogant actors in the great lie of the coup d'etat.
Twenty-four hours after the decision of the Schleswig-Holstein court was made public, Llarena was presented with yet another headache. A suit instigated by Catalan group Querellants per la República (Plaintiffs for the Republic) has led to 3,418 complaints being brought against the Supreme Court for breaching fundamental rights. It is very possible that it will be rejected but then may continue its judicial path in Europe where the whole card-house is already looking very fragile.
And the Catalan prisoners' lawyers are asking for their immediate release. And the public, again, is the protagonist this Saturday in a demonstration to show strength, solidarity, dignity and integrity. Spain, fearful of European judgment, in its labyrinth.