The absence of former Catalan president Quim Torra from the trial that took place this Thursday in Barcelona's City of Justice - where he was tried for the second time for not having permanently removed the banner in support of the political prisoners which hung from the balcony of the Palau de la Generalitat at a time when there was no election campaign - will only serve to highlight the Spanish courts' bias. Because the prosecution's demand for a 20-month ban from holding office and a fine of 30,000 euros was maintained and the trial went ahead in the ex-president's absence. But, in spite of everything, there can be no act of protest, not even a testimonial one, and no exaggerated political initiative, no matter how annoying it might be, if it might be seen as a complaint about something only explicable by the need to persecute a president of Catalonia, who was removed for not taking down a banner. A banner!
The judicial steamroller will not stop due to the absence of president Torra and, in the meantime, one can only conclude that the repression won't stop either and that the model of going from case to case giving out sentences that remove from Catalan politics as many actors as possible is not changed with the passage of time, nor with a politically less-confrontational approach from the Spanish state like the current one. The independence movement has become accustomed to appearing outside the courtroom doors with the normality of those who follow a routine, because the sentence that the court will impose in the end will be significant. It is true that the Constitutional Court has been divided in some of its latest rulings, especially those ones which European courts will, one fine day, have to review, and surely invalidate. But the judicial majorities of those who have led the crackdown are still very sizable.
All this comes at a time when, in addition to the permanent repression, there is a widespread perception in independentist circles that the lack of strategy has taken the movement to a dead end. This Thursday, Catalonia's public survey agency the Centre for Opinion Studies (CEO) certified a difference of almost fifteen points between those in favour of independence (38.8%) and those opposed (53.5%). It is no small difference, although it is true that the question is not exactly how the respondents would vote in a referendum on self-determination, but on whether they want Catalonia to be an independent state or not. In any case, a lot of damage has been done and since those small victories or even last May's result, with a difference of little more than three points and therefore close to a technical draw, a very significant margin has now opened.
It is obvious that there are several reasons, and perhaps the most important is that there is no situation on the horizon similar to that which Catalan politics experienced in 2017. As well, there is fatigue and a lack of strategy, visible in the fact that there are voters of all the pro-independence parties who have drifted away from the idea of an independent state of Catalonia. Thus, 93.2% of Junts voters are in favour; in the CUP, 85.7% and in ERC, 82.1%, percentages far from those of a few years ago. What remains unchanged is the broad support of Catalan society for a referendum on self-determination, which remains at 72.6%, with an opposition of only 19.1% of the Catalan electorate. This continues to represent a very broad zone of encounter for Catalan society, even though on October 1st, 2017, a referendum was already held that was violently repressed by the Spanish state.