I read on Thursday morning that a total of eight of those indicted in the Democratic Tsunami case, being investigated by judge Manuel García-Castellón of the National Audience, have now decided to flee Spain and reside abroad until the amnesty law is passed and they are certain that they will not go to prison. Eight of the twelve under investigation by the court. Three of whom have made public their decisions over the last 48 hours and have said in justification that they wish to defend their rights and denounce internationally that Spain is using terrorism to silence political dissent. While I was reading about this fact which I consider, from all points of view, to be a serious and worrying democratic anomaly, I heard in the background a Socialist minister speaking on the radio about the Spain of the re-encounter, the advantages it has for the Catalans and how the PSOE had managed to turn a page after 2017.
And I think about this new wave of exiles seven years after the Catalan independence process and I can't help but wonder if there is any sense in the state of terror generated which has resulted in free citizens going abroad to protect their rights against accusations that are as disproportionate and false as those of terrorism. I don't remember the first time that Pedro Sánchez coined "the Spain of the re-encounter" as a catchphrase. I search for it in the news archives for a first time and I find that last October in the federal committee meeting of the PSOE, in which he injected the vaccine that without an amnesty there would be no Socialist government, he asserted: "Catalonia is ready for the complete re-encounter". And he proclaimed the new doctrine: "In the name of Spain, in the interests of Spain, I today defend an amnesty in Catalonia", as the way to "consolidate" the re-encounter between Spain and Catalonia.
I search further, and the most distant reference I can find is from February 6th, 2020, in which, during a visit to Barcelona, he argued in favour of dialogue for the re-encounter. Later, he delivered a speech at the Gran Teatre del Liceu entitled "Re-encounter, a project for the future, for all of Spain" and outlined what would be the vertebral argument for the years that followed. And when people talk about the hamster of the independence process, the least that one can do is recall that this treadmill of judicial repression is only of interest to Spain. To those who want to end the independence movement. To those who seek to remove even the possibility of calling for independence in demonstrations.
Seven years after the independence process, I can't help but wonder if there is any sense in the state of terror generated which has resulted in citizens going abroad to protect their rights
In the Basque Country there are also those who need to talk about ETA to maintain their political positions. The Òmnium Cultural organization on Thursday unfurled a huge banner on Terminal 1 of the El Prat airport to warn all visitors arriving in Barcelona that "in Spain, protesting is terrorism". That's what we're talking about. From a judge who, in the Democratic Tsunami case, also maintains under investigation the Catalan president in exile Carles Puigdemont and the secretary general of the Republican Left, Marta Rovira. Time does not seem to pass for Spanish justice. And the fact that a breath of fresh air always finds its way in from the European justice system serves to confirm that only by going outside Spain can you currently find a just judicial decision.
In the last day, the advocate general of the European Court of Justice has proposed to the court that it should "annul" the judgment of the lower European General Court, of July 2022, which endorsed the European Parliament's initial refusal to grant MEP seats to the elected deputies Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comín, in the summer of 2019. In his conclusions, the Polish lawyer Maciej Aleksander Szpunar states that the court of first instance "made the mistake" of not stating that they had obtained their status in June 2019. How do they expect the Catalan independentists not to go to Europe when they tend to win all the legal battles?