The permanent commission of Spain's General Council of the Judiciary has closed ranks around Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena. Today it could announce an agreement with respect to the request for protection from the judge who led the investigation against the Catalan referendum over the complaint presented in Belgium by exiled members of the Catalan government. The aim would be to avoid Llarena having to go to testify to a Belgian court on 4th September as summonsed.
This is according to El Español, who say that the council accepts Llarena's theory that the civil lawsuit brought by Carles Puigdemont, Clara Ponsatí, Toni Comín and Lluís Puig against him in Belgium is "a planned attack on the conditions of independence within which I carry out my role" because "it hopes for a Belgian court to examine how appropriate" the investigation is.
For that reason, the council would be prepared to offer Llarena protection and adopt "all the measures necessary to ensure the conditions befitting the aforesaid framework of independence and security". One of these would be to urge the members of the Catalan government in exile "to cease or abstain in future from any act which disrupts the independent exercise of the magistrate's jurisdictional function".