"This Montoro is irresponsible. That's all we needed. It's seem we've entered the demolition stage." That was the mood in political Madrid after it was learnt this Wednesday that judge Pablo Llarena has ordered the Spanish treasury minister, Cristóbal Montoro, to provide him with information over the basis for his comments that not one euro of public money was spent organising the 1st October Catalan referendum. It's nothing there: a bantamweight fight with the ring open to the public, shouting now against Llarena, now against Montoro. It's clear that something has come loose in this careful plot to invent a coup d'état which didn't take place and accusations as serious as rebellion and misuse of public funds.
The charge of rebellion has been toppled by the German justice system and will end up taking the same path, most likely, in the United Kingdom, Belgium and Switzerland. That of misuse of public funds, which is also being seriously questioned in Europe, is now being toppled in Spain by no lesser a politician than the treasury minister who is laying bare a very significant part of the investigation carried out by Llarena and the narrative constructed. Montoro, who doesn't normally get intimidated, sent the secretary general for local and autonomous community financing, Belén Navarro, to the Congress in the afternoon to maintain the minister's story in the Parliament. Maybe one day the minister and the judge might tell us why at this moment -the most delicate for the Supreme Court judge- this public dispute has broken out.
However, meanwhile, some questions have to be brought up even though they might not get answers. Why is judge Llarena ordering this of the minister now when his position had been public for months and he hadn't been asked to? Has he taken all the steps in the investigation with only the Civil Guard's reports and not having compared them, even if only for his own assurance, with the services of the treasury? If so, that would be enormously serious given the sentences called for and the weight of the charges. Because the most surprising thing is that the minister's position, which ends up being by extension the position of the Spanish government, is at least striking given that it openly refutes what the judge is arguing. And, in this case, it has, moreover, an added twist: although the control over the Catalan government's finances has been absolutely complete since September last year, since 2015 there has been a certain tutelage of them which translated into at least partial monitoring. That, moreover, crescendoed over the months and with the lack of political communication between the two governments.
Montoro has shown part of the disgrace of the referendum case and has given enough ammunition for all the lawyers of the fifteen charged by the Supreme Court, nine in prisons in the community of Madrid and six in exile, have a very valuable card to play. Judge Llarena has a problem with the truth. And now it's not just those facing charges saying it but also Europe and Cristóbal Montoro.