For days now, the international press has been talking about Spain, the police and judicial repression against the Catalan independence movement, the pardons granted to the nine political prisoners - which are nothing but the confirmation of the Catalan anomaly that was shown up last week by the Council of Europe - and also, the strange and anomalous situation of professor Andreu Mas-Colell as a world-renowned figure targeted by the arbitrary economic persecution announced by Spain's Court of Accounts in a new wave of repression, with hearings starting on June 29th.
The former Catalan minister of the economy has this week received support from 33 Nobel Prize winners in economics, along with other prominent economists and the European Economic Association. In short, what is being pursued by the Court of Accounts, a body discredited as inbred and politicized, is the civil death of around thirty people, by demanding multi-million euro deposits based on the Catalan government's foreign relations between the years 2011 and 2017. The bail will be covered by seizing property, confiscating money they have in current accounts or even paychecks and, in any case, when the case is closed, if the auditing body accepts their plea, they would get it back.
It is obvious that what the Court of Accounts has done is a scandal and a persecution. Its analysis of the Catalan government's foreign action from 2011 onwards is quite surprising, since the government of Artur Mas worked with parliamentary support from the Popular Party. As of 2013 the PP was no longer in the parliamentary equation and the government accord was between CiU and ERC. It was not until January 2016 that a clearly pro-independence government was formed in Catalonia, and Mas-Colell was no longer a minister.
A newspaper completely above suspicion of any lurches towards independence, the Frankfurter Allgemeine has now informed its readers of the persecution suffered by the former minister. The German daily notes his academic background as a professor at Harvard and Berkeley Universities, and describes him as a role model for all scientists working abroad. The fact that he may lose “not only his fortune, but also his house and pension” is a matter of astonishment to the newspaper.
The vulgar action of the Court of Accounts is one more show of the level of ferocity employed against the Catalan independence movement. Mas-Colell's situation has served to draw an international spotlight and discredit the institutions of the Spanish state a little more. There is a kind of snowball phenomenon with the discredit of Spain: the comparison with Turkey at the Council of Europe hurt, and has reopened the debate on whether some type of action can be expected by the European Commission.