I'm no more a cinema fan than anyone who enjoys an intelligent film or likes to have a good time. That doesn't mean that my mental archive doesn't frequently, instinctively offer up titles for reality. These last few days, I've thought often about Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. Very often. I don't know if you remember that Oscar-nominated movie in which a sharp US presidential adviser, played by De Niro, tries to cover up a presidential sex scandal weeks before an election. To do so, he hires a surreal Hollywood producer, the great Hoffman, who helps him stage a non-existent war in the distant Albania, American hero included, to divert attention. It was released in Spain as La cortina de humo ("The smoke screen"), but its original title was Wag the Dog. Have you seen it? I recommend it, although in these times we're in maybe you don't have to go to the theatre. "Why does the dog wag its tail? Because a dog is smarter than its tail. If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog", is one of the phrases it immortalised.
When the tail tries to wag the dog, anything can happen. The perfect storm of the supposedly falsified translation neutralising the Belgian lawsuit against judge Llarena and which aims to disqualify and even condemn the lawyers who have designed and implemented its defence, was from the beginning a convulsive moment of the tail. Yesterday, it was confirmed in Brussels something which Belgian and Spanish lawyers had already repeated time and again: the material error would be corrected whence peace and hence glory. Neither did the lawsuit collapse over it, nor should it have a greater consequence in a procedure which, should it be successful or not, isn't based on whether a clause was in the conditional or the affirmative, but on the fact of whether the investigating judge suggested in private remarks at a private event that the defence's thesis cannot be correct. A strategic plan which has always aimed to make those who believe themselves to be untouchable to feel that maybe they aren't to the extent they think they are. And that's exactly how it's been taken.
Believe me that when I spoke with Maître Marchand on Saturday, my level of French allowed me to tell from his tone just how mad he seemed over the controversy I was asking him about. He assured me that the error in translating Llarena's words from the Spanish had been made in his office and that it was only a consequence of the mechanisms they set up when working together on the same document. What's sure is that, despite believing it completely unnecessary, the lawyers have checked their own working systems and have found the cause of the mistake. As they related it to me, there was that translation and then a better-translated text which was emailed to the lawyer who was putting together the final document to substitute one for the other. All these emails exist and show the date and time they were sent. Finally, the recipient overlooks making this change in the final document, or rather the document which is considered final and is sent to be translated is from before this change. It's not going to matter much. The tail has started convulsing and it's not easily stopped now. One of the things which angers me most about this whole affair is that it's making clear the way it doesn't matter if they make the whole Spanish legal and institutional system groan with a single final objectives. The end justifies the means, regardless of whether that fouls up the rule of law. It's not the first time it's happened, but the Catalan question is exacerbating it. They're going after them and that includes going after those who defend them with all means at their disposal using their legitimate right to defence. Not shyly at all.
They're going after them and that includes going after those who defend them with all means at their disposal using their legitimate right to defence. Not shyly at all.
The laughable lawsuit, which was merely a tool for a recusal, which was a motive for jokes, in the end led judge Llarena to make a spurious use of the amparo protection system to cover his back and, above all, his pocket. It wasn't beneath the president of the General Council of the Judiciary to grant him it after the deadline. When the justice ministry examined the case and deemed, correctly, that only if it were the Spanish legal system under a foreign microscope and not a private act by the judge would it make sense to use public money, it was the forces of the legal brigade which mobilised and looked for a political change from the government. It was Cándido Conde-Pumpido, a Constitutional Court judge, who mobilised foreign minister Borrell and managed to change the government's story. Little did it matter that he himself is set to study appeals from the accused if they come.
Then came the battle over the translation, the complaint to the College of Lawyers of Madrid by a surreal MEP and, most astonishingly, the unprecedented statement by the dean of the Madrid lawyers, all alone because he's worth it and without the backing of his board, to "protect" a judge and, from the very beginning, show himself to be faithful to the majority slogan. Close ranks. The bad side is that his job is to protect lawyers and it's lawyer Gonzalo Boye who asked him for protection after having received threats and criticisms due to who his clients are and the defence he's providing them. And it doesn't stop there. It's just emerged that a so-called Movimiento 24DOS will bring a lawsuit against the Belgian judge, the plaintiffs and Gonzalo Boye for the alleged crimes of malfeasance, usurpation of powers and presentation of a false translation. It's notable that such an announcement should have been made by the lawyer Nicolás González-Cuéllar, the close friend of Manuel Marchena, president of the second chamber of the Supreme Court and entrusted so far (we'll see what happens with the recusal appeal, but I can guess) with presiding over the trial.
The Madrid framework is creaking. They're not using the headlines, rather their army of collaborators in the shadows. They're going after them. The tail wants to wag the dog and I don't know if they realise that, getting involved in this dynamic, they blow up all their arguments that the defence undertaken for Puigdemont and the former ministers is illicit. Nor do they care about the logic because they've already sounded the alarm and called up the reserves. Now it's a question of seeing who really is smarter.