By this time, I think, there are very few politicians and opinion leaders who are in any doubt that the Spanish judiciary has formally decided to entrench itself in opposition to an amnesty for independence process prosecutions. This was made very clear this Monday by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) when it approved an institutional statement against the amnesty, without so much as a blush, even though no bill has been presented to Congress and such a declaration is not part of the body's competencies. This CGPJ decision arrived hours after the judge of the National Audience court, Manuel García-Castellón, released a resolution in which he placed exiled Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and the secretary general of the Republican Left (ERC), Marta Rovira, at the apex of the Democratic Tsunami platform. In addition, the case remains open over an alleged crime of terrorism and around a dozen people are appearing as defendants.
I've been saying it for days: there is no way that the justice system will end up accepting the amnesty law if it does not take into account the lawfare that may be carried out on the proposed law's perimeter. The parties can go over the text as much as they want, send and return all the documents drawn up by one side and the other, study the most imaginative formulas possible to satisfy each other's needs, but without a lawfare clause that can give an insurance umbrella for all those who have been victims of a devastating repression, the amnesty will sooner or later end up springing leaks. Judge García-Castellón has allowed more than one person to see the light on this fact with his resolution on the Tsunami case this Monday which, in addition to the exaggeration of classifying it in the context of a terrorist action, subtly introduces, as if he didn't really want to, the death of a French citizen on the day of the occupation of El Prat airport.
Thus, he has asked the Civil Guard to investigate whether the death of a passenger at the airport on October 14th, 2019, can be linked to the Democratic Tsunami investigations. García-Castellón refers to a 65-year-old French citizen, who was reported to have died from a heart attack after walking three kilometres through the airport's Terminal 2 due to the facilities blocked by protesting citizens. The issue is by no means insignificant, since if the Civil Guard report were affirmative, the combination of terrorism and a crime causing death could end up meaning that Puigdemont, Rovira and even the others were outside the amnesty. The judge has distorted reality, but he already has in his hands an artifact with which he can torpedo the political efforts that have been made. The prosecutors have announced that they will appeal, as they do not consider that there is a crime of terrorism but rather, one of public disorder and, consequently, will request that the case be returned to a lower court in Barcelona.
Since, at this point, no-one should be naive, it has to be assumed that there is a real possibility that the National Audience judge will keep the case where it is and be able to pulling on the thread that he has started to expose. Ever since José María Aznar gave the Spanish public his encouragement - "anyone who can do anything, they should do it, whoever can contribute, let them contribute" - actions have begun to take place that have little to do with chance and that have no other objective than to create a certain state of public opinion in which the pronouncements against the amnesty are increasingly numerous and range from statements by figures within the Catholic church to the distribution in military barracks of a letter calling for a coup d'état to "help" Spain.