Spain's state solicitors, the legal representatives of the Spanish government, have, in the end, evaded the pressure from the Court of Accounts and its presidency, which were urgently pursuing a ruling from the solicitors' office. Alleging a conflict of interest, the solicitors have avoided giving any opinions on the legality of the guarantees for the 5.4 million euro bail presented by the Catalan government, through its public financing organism, the Catalan Institute of Finance, for some thirty members of the government of Catalonia between 2010 and 2017, including presidents Carles Puigdemont and Artur Mas, vice-president Oriol Junqueras and several ministers such as Andreu Mas-Colell, Francesc Homs and Raül Romeva, in a case centred on foreign policy spending.
It's true that the Court of Accounts, the public auditing tribunal, could still go ahead now and take the action it wants, but the position of the solicitors' report, directed by Consuelo Castro, is not as neutral as its decision may at first glance seem. Thus, after declining to take a position due to a possible conflict of interest and the risk of nullifying the case, it points out that "the prosecution of the decisions that are issued must be carried out in accordance with the decree law of the autonomous community of Catalonia 15/2021, for the creation of the Complementary Risk Fund of the Generalitat of Catalonia, since it is a norm with status of law that has been neither declared unconstitutional nor suspended in its effects on an interim basis".
It is true that the legal language is confusing enough for the nuances to easily get lost, but it is no small matter for the solicitors to tell the Court of Accounts something that under normal conditions it should not forget: that the decree law has not been declared unconstitutional, nor suspended. Whether this is enough to halt the relentless persecution of the independence movement by the Court of Accounts, a body whose mandate is more than expired, is another matter entirely.
The fact that the state solicitors had in the first instance already shown tentativeness about the question, and now confirm their position, comes to reinforce something I have pointed out on more than one occasion. The Catalan economy ministry made a thorough legal examination of the issue, putting on the table a document that, in addition to being absolutely legal, is impossible to deactivate juridically if things are to be done in accordance with the current legislation.
In recent months, minister Jaume Giró has avoided appealing to the Constitutional Court. Instead, he managed to get Catalonia's own examiner of constitutional aspects of legislation, the Council of Statutory Guarantees - where there are, in addition to members elected by the pro-independence parties, representatives of the Catalan Socialists, the Comuns and the Popular Party - to approve it unanimously, and Parliament itself validated the measure by a large majority with only the 20 deputies of Vox, Ciudadanos and the PP opposed. We have seen in recent years that, many times, such efforts can turn out to be completely useless, as the Spanish state can, if it wants to, press on regardless. Now that the ball has been returned to the Court of Accounts, we'll see if it decides to go on tilting at windmills or takes the hint so subtly given by the state solicitors.