Madrid's senior judge, Antonio Viejo, has slammed the door shut on a Belgian request for Spanish Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena to appear in a Belgian court on 4th September. Llarena is the investigating judge in the case surrounding last year's Catalan independence referendum and related events. According to El País, Viejo will not process the request, judging it "inadmissible".
The summons followed a civil lawsuit presented by the members of the Catalan government in exile -Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín, Mertixell Serret, Lluís Puig and Clara Ponsatí- which questions the judge's impartiality based on public statements he has made. Toni Comín said, in the press conference announcing the lawsuit, that these comments "lay bear that we're being pursued for our political ideas".
The Belgian court accepted the filing and summonsed the Spanish judge for 4th September. Llarena also had the option of sending a lawyer to testify for him.