There'll have to be a new literary genre created to encompass the ever more numerous and surprising decrees from the Spanish Supreme Court over the nine Catalan political prisoners held in three centres in the community of Madrid, the five members of the Catalan government in exile, starting with president Puigdemont, in Germany, Belgium and Scotland, and Esquerra Republicana's secretary general, Marta Rovira, also in exile, in her case in Switzerland. In total, fifteen people. If so far we'd seen how a story could be created around the events of September and October last year, which had little to do with reality, this Tuesday, in a surprising and at least debatable ruling, we've been able to amuse ourselves with how it's possible to go as far as generating new charges to achieve an objective. In this case, the extradition of Carles Puigdemont by the German courts; if it can't be for the crime of rebellion, then let it be for sedition. As if saying to the court: send us him any way possible!
For those of us making from the world of political reporting or opinion a continuous assessment of the world of law -doubtlessly, with more hours spent already than on Cifuentes's non-existent Master's or those Pablo Casado is meant to have done- and look to find opinions from the criminal lawyers who are following almost by the minute the incredible trial of the Catalan referendum, it's easy to say that politics has taken over the debate, twisting the laws. The problem arises when it's the professionals who send out the cry, as has happened this time, with the ruling from the Supreme Court's criminal chamber in which the court was meant to rule on deputy Jordi Sànchez's appeal to attend his investiture debate in the Catalan Parliament on 12 March which didn't end up happening due to judge Pablo Llarena's ban on him leaving Estremera prison. The judiciary must have its own logic, but it's taken a strange, tortuous path. And all of this to validate, this 17th April, at least formally, the reasons why Sànchez couldn't attend, according to the chamber, his investiture debate. Quick it's hasn't exactly been.
However, when you read the 37 pages, in the middle you find, starting on page 23, the real reason for and importance of the ruling which is none other than strengthening the extradition request for Puigdemont from Germany issued by judge Llarena for rebellion and initially denied by that country's judges. At any price? It seems so and that's why a new charge like sedition which the investigating judge hadn't contemplated is incorporated on the fly. It's worth pausing here a moment: how does the Supreme Court do it? Not exactly with empathy, since it's issued an exaggerated, almost desperate criticism of the German justice system and the court which had given the ruling, in Schleswig-Holstein, even suggesting that they are ladies and gentlemen with no idea of anything; and that if they had taken enough time to analyse all the evidence sent by Spanish justice in detail, the result would have been different. It doesn't seem to be a report to make friends with the German judges nor an encomium of their system.
Two ideas from the text are very striking. The first, with respect to the 1st October vote: "the protagonists of the [independence] process persisted with their road map and induced some two million people to go out into the streets to vote illegally", it says. And, at another point, "the referendum did end up taking place... two million voters who had been unlawfully convinced of their legitimate right to vote". The second makes reference to the violence, to that which there was and, especially, to that which "allegedly" there could have been. At this point various references are made to the restraint of the 6,000 agents of the Spanish police and the fact that "the result was kept limited to an important number of lightly injured". And it concludes, recklessly, like this: "if a significantly larger number of police had intervened, it's very likely that everything would have ended in a massacre and then it would have been very feasible that the result of the European arrest warrant would have been very different".
Put simply, with more brutish repression than that which took place on 1st October there would have been "a massacre". According to the dictionary, "una masacre" is "a combined slaughter of many people, generally defenceless". Just reading it makes you shiver and it's easy to remember what Marta Rovira once said on the matter, earning her so much criticism. In other words, a massacre would have made Puigdemont's extradition easier and there wouldn't be any debate on the subject. Ouch!