Although nobody expected both the Public Prosecution Service and the State's Solicitors to come out this Monday in favour of letting the Catalan political prisoners out on bail, now the trial in the Supreme Court is over and while waiting for the sentences, it's appropriate to reread one of their public arguments: "The risk of reoffending which is summed up by the attitude of permanent civil and institutional resistance towards to the constitutional order, which has been confirmed particularly with the speeches by the defendants when exercising their right to closing remarks". Here we learn the prosecutors' evaluation of two things.
Firstly, as the opinion itself says, their evalution of the statements made by the political prisoners last Wednesday in the Supreme Court when a number of the defendants, with great dignity, explained their roles in the events of October 2017 and defended their actions with their heads held high. From that session, doubtlessly because of how powerful the message was, they highlighted the words of Jordi Cuixart, who said without losing his characteristic smile that "we'll do it again". The public prosecution calls that reiteración delectiva (reoffending), an expression also used by the state's lawyers.
Secondly, the filings show that the report from the UN working group, which describes the provisional detention of a number of the accused as arbitrary and calls for their release, is going to be a waste of paper as there is no will at all to follow the directives and recommendations of international bodies.
So the Spanish state remains stuck in its domestic bubble, as we've also seen in the refusal to grant Carles Puigdemont, Oriol Junqueras and Toni Comín their MEP credentials. They were elected if you read the publication of the names of the MEPs who achieved seats in the European Parliament in the election on 26th May, but after the Central Electoral Commission took out its tipex that's no longer the case. When it comes to Puigdemont and Comín because if they travel to Madrid they'll be arrested and, as for Junqueras, because he's not been allowed to complete the formalities in the Congress and is being prevented from getting his MEP credentials for perverse reasons.
The interesting match Puigdemont and Comín are playing with the Spanish state which will soon end up before the European courts is, in the eyes of many observers, wide open. The string of good results lawyer Gonzalo Boye has had in his repeated clashes with the Spanish justice system with Europe as the epicentre of the decisions gives hopes that, in this case, it will be the same again. If so, the Spanish failure would be emphatic due to how strongly the state has come out fighting and because the seat as an MEP achieved by Puigdemont would confer parliamentary immunity on him, a circumstance which the authorities in Madrid don't want to even consider, since as well as being terribly annoying it would undercut all their rhetoric. Put simply, it would be even more serious than when the German justice system let Puigdemont go free, ignoring all the arguments from the Supreme Court and opposing his extradition on the charge of rebellion.