Convicted. The judge of an ordinary-level criminal court in Madrid has sentenced the ex-CUP deputy Antonio Baños to four months in prison and a ban on public office holding for the same length of time for a crime of disobedience, due to his refusal to answer the questions put by the lawyer for the far-right Vox party during the 2019 trial of the Catalan pro-independence leaders, in the Spanish Supreme Court. Baños's punishment, announced this Tuesday, is different from that of his former party colleague Eulàlia Reguant, whom the Supreme Court convicted last week for an identical offence; however, in order not to affect her current position as a deputy in the Catalan Parliament - stated generically in the court sentence - her prison sentence, which would have implied a ban on office holding, was replaced with a fine of 13,500 euros, for the same actions. Baños's sentence is not final and can be appealed to a higher court, in his case, the Madrid Audience.
In the sentence, the judge of criminal court number 30 of Madrid affirms that Antonio Baños made a "reprehensible taunt" when declaring as a witness at the Supreme Court trial, on January 27th, 2019. The text states that he first agreed to have the presiding judge, Manuel Marchena, ask him directly the questions from Vox, which was conducting a private prosecution in the case, but when it came to the third question he did not want to continue and said: "Excuse me, is it the person from Vox asking me, and I understand that it is you who is asking me, but then, in fact, I am answering the gentleman from Vox, am I not?” Impatient, judge Marchena suddenly declared the interrogation to be over and the court agreed to punish the witness. In the resolution published this Tuesday, judge Hortensia de Oro-Pulido considers that Baños "firmly and persistently refused to comply with the court's order and to answer the questions from the private prosecution". And for this he is convicted of serious disobedience and sentenced to the penalty requested by the prosecution, which the judge describes as "proportionate". In the trial, held on September 29th, Baños asked to testify in Catalan; the sentence mentions that he refused to do so in Spanish after being told that he was legally obliged to use this language, "the only official language of the Spanish state and, obviously, of the Community of Madrid", as the court document puts it.
Ideological motives, not valid
The judge also states that the defendant's disobedience "cannot be defended based on supposed ideological motives" and, therefore, she does not agree to his acquittal. Nor does she accept another argument of the defence, that he has been punished twice for the same offence, as the Supreme Court had already imposed a fine of 2,500 euros on him for his action. The judge insists that Baños's behaviour is clearly reflected in the video of the session, in which she asserts that "he shows himself unmoved by the financial penalty despite having a reasonable period of reflection", a fact she considers serious. Finally, she maintains that his behaviour in the investigation of his disobedience case also confirms his position before the court.