An almost unique case. A Spanish criminal court, the Barcelona Audience, has this Thursday heard the trial of a young woman named Gina, a British national and a resident of Barcelona's Clot-Camp de l'Arpa neighbourhood, for whom the prosecutor has demanded expulsion from Spain for having moved two containers in one of the Barcelona protests following the Spanish Supreme Court's guilty verdicts against the Catalan pro-independence leaders, in October 2019. Specifically, the woman is facing a two-year prison sentence for an offence of public disorder, which would be replaced by expulsion from the country for eight years. The defendant exercised her right not to testify at the trial. And her lawyer, Jordi Busquets, asked the court to acquit her and in the face of the expulsion demand, set out how deeply rooted the woman's life in the Spanish state is, having come to live in Alicante at the age of six, and even having worked for the Catalan government.
The protest for which she is charged took place on October 16th, 2019, two days after the Supreme Court announced prison sentences of 9 to 13 years for nine political and social pro-independence leaders, found guilty of sedition and misuse of public funds for in connection with the Catalan independence process and the 2017 referendum. The court announcements provoked widespread demonstrations throughout Catalonia, including many called by the “so-called Committees for the Defence of the Republic”, as the prosecutor put it. In this case, the protest was held in front of the Catalan ministry of the interior. The prosecution states that protesters began throwing objects at the police cordon that protected the ministerial headquarters, and that the Mossos d'Esquadra police acted to disperse the protesters. And, according to the prosecutor's report, Gina, along with other people, moved two rubbish containers and placed them in the middle of the street, where Carrer Aragó meets Carrer Roger de Flor, to prevent access by police vans and altering the public peace.
Identified
At the trial, in section 3 of the Barcelona Audience, a Mossos d'Esquadra officer said that she identified Gina "due to her fringe" and her appearance because she had already seen her in a previous protest, in February 2019, the so-called general strike. A second Mossos officer ratified the identification of the woman by other police colleagues, which was questioned by her lawyer, who argued that "many people have similar physical traits."
In his summing up document, defence lawyer Busquets states that there are no images showing any actions by the protester, and quoted a sentence from section 6 of the Barcelona Audience, in which the judge acquitted a protester who moved containers in a protest because his action did not lead to the disturbance of the public peace, as required by the definition of the offence. The lawyer demanded Gina's acquittal, and if this is not granted, it should apply mitigation due to undue delays in the proceedings.
The protester was accompanied at the doors of the Palau de Justícia in Barcelona by a support group.