Many articles have been written about the referral of the amnesty law to the European Court of Justice by the Spanish courts in which there are cases related to the independence process. About their hypothetical response, the time that would have to wait for the resolution and the situation in which Carles Puigdemont would be left with a view to his return to Catalonia. A lot of wasted words, because in the end the Supreme Court took it upon itself to close the debate. It did so on Monday to affirm that the amnesty law does not cover the crimes of embezzlement committed by Puigdemont and the members of his Government. The magistrates demonstrated linguistic creativity on a par with the best novelists.
The Second Criminal Chamber, headed by Manuel Marchena, who presided over the trial of the independence process, had to interpret the law as it was approved without forgetting the intentions of the legislators. He did not refrain from making comments of political assessment, such as when he referred to “the condescending leniency of the Spanish legislator towards embezzlers convicted in a final sentence”, an argument that can be found in the criticisms made by the Popular Party and Vox.
His ruling applies to politicians already convicted in the trial of the independence process. Judge Pablo Llanera’s ruling has similar arguments and targets Puigdemont and two other defendants who fled abroad to avoid being tried.
The amnesty law excluded from its application those responsible for a crime of embezzlement who had benefited financially. It is not a stretch to say that the pro-independence politicians were not seeking to make money from the independence process. Their objectives were political. What the Supreme Court does is turn the argument on its head with an assumption. Personal enrichment occurred because the use of public funds allowed them not to put money out of their own pockets.
The Supreme Court does not know whether their personal assets were sufficient to finance the entire process. It simply imagines it: “The only alternative available to Mr. Junqueras, Mr. Romeva, Mr. Turull and Mrs. Bassa, if they wanted to contribute to the independence project, was to use the public funds of the Generalitat or pay out of their own pockets.” Perhaps it assumes that they could always have gone to the bank to apply for a loan.
Then, he leaves a sentence so that people can entertain themselves with what he wants to say. “Punishment for property crimes is not justified by taking someone else’s things, but by taking someone else’s things.” A play on words to show that being a judge does not prevent you from having a sense of humor. It raises the suspicion that if the amnesty law had had a different content regarding the crime of embezzlement, the Second Chamber would have managed to avoid having to apply it.
As regards a possible damage to the European Union, cited as an exception in the amnesty law, the court had a more difficult task, but it was only a matter of using its imagination and returning to the realm of hypotheses. The convicted did not use funds provided directly by the EU, so it was necessary to climb into the time machine and travel into the future.
An independence of Catalonia would have affected the interests of the EU – the ruling maintains – because Spain’s economic contribution to the community budget would have been less due to not being able to count on the Catalan economy, giving as examples the decrease in its level of income or VAT revenues.
No euro from Brussels was spent on the process, but what about the multiverse where a fully independent Catalan state could exist?
There was never the slightest chance of Catalan independence happening, unless you make the joke based on real events that it was in force for eight seconds. The Supreme Court’s own condemnatory sentence of the Catalan independence process made this quite clear when it spoke of a “daydream” that had no correlation in the real world.
Marchena and the other judges ruled that it was only a dream of those responsible or “a deceptive device created to mobilize citizens who believed they were attending the historic act of founding the Catalan Republic,” and that they were only an element of “political pressure” on the Spanish Government.
According to the Supreme Court, it was only a fantasy that ruled out a conviction for rebellion and allowed it to be convicted for the crime of sedition. The same court has now decided that this self-serving fiction is used to interpret the amnesty law with the intention that it does not benefit the convicted Catalan politicians.
The Supreme Court’s decision poses a serious political problem for the Government. They are no longer just judges crazy and uncontrollable those who try to boycott the amnesty after they suddenly discovered that the protests against the sentence of the independence process were a case of terrorism or that contacts with Russians constitute a crime of treason.
These judges have become political actors with unambiguous purposes. Judge Aguirre’s intentions are even more transparent when we learn what he says in private: “The government has two German newscasts lefttwo, and that’s it, fuck off.” Another piece of high legal rhetoric in defense of the rule of law, which is heading in the same direction.
With the Supreme Court, the Government’s argument must be different. It will not want to risk a head-on collision with the country’s most important court. It is on more difficult terrain to control and has reason to have doubts about the consequences of the ruling on Puigdemont’s priorities.
The former president appeared very calm during the Catalan election campaign. When asked if he feared being arrested upon returning to Spain, he did not rule out something like this happening, but said it would not be something that would have “much impact.” It remains to be seen whether he still thinks the same.
For the moment, he has limited himself to using a witty tweet. “La Toga Nostra,” he wrote. His number two, Jordi Turull, said that his plans have not changed: “He is a man of his word and has said that he will return when there is an investiture debate” in the Parliament.
The decisions of the Second Chamber and Judge Llarena place Puigdemont outside the application of the amnesty law with the same arguments that the right has used. We will have to wait to see how his personal situation affects the negotiations to form a government in Catalonia and his relations with the Government of Pedro Sánchez. Not at all good in principle.
The Supreme Court judges conceded a victory to the right with the rulings announced on Monday. The PP did not hide its euphoria. Now they think that their fondest dream is closer: that the legislature ends before the end of the year. The Supreme Court has already done its part to make that wish come true.
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