In order to form a government of PSOE and Sumar (centre and left) and avoid one of PP and VOX (right and extreme right), they made a pact with eight parties, with 179 seats, representing 12.3 million citizens. The Catalonia pro-independence supporters, essential to achieve the pact, demanded, as an initial condition, the approval of an amnesty law that would deactivate the judicial repression with which the high judiciary, motivated by its exacerbated Spanish nationalism, has persecuted Catalan nationalists (500 people have convictions or pending trials). The PSOE, which is also very nationalist and which rejected the amnesty, did a U-turn after the elections and accepted the amnesty in order not to lose the government.
Spanish nationalism is not accepting Catalonia amnesty
However, the amnesty law is not being accepted by Spanish nationalism, so we will see how it will be applied. But in reality what would have been fair would have been a process of nullification of the cases, admitting that the Catalan independence supporters had not committed any crime in organising a referendum on self-determination and that the accusations against them were part of the “lawfare” (instrumentalising justice for political ends) used by the state against them.
Then the police officers who improperly attacked the referendum voters could have been tried. The amnesty, on the other hand, annuls the crimes that are understood to have been committed by both sides, but the fact is that the pro-independence side acted democratically and committed no crime, while the state acted outside the law.
Although the amnesty is unfair to the pro-independence supporters because it attributes crimes to them, what makes Spanish nationalism mad is that, being the strong side, they cannot win and humiliate the weak, as they have always done.
As the state is the strong party, its approval of the amnesty implies that it implicitly accepts that it played dirty with the illegitimate aim of trying to destroy a perfectly legitimate political movement.
Legal twists and turns
The Spanish Congress ensured that the law was unambiguous because it was certain that the judges would try to interpret it in a distorted way against the Catalan pro-independence supporters.
As it is not possible to grant amnesty to specific individuals for the fact that they are pro-independence (in fact being pro-independence “was their crime”), specific crimes were amnestied, in the context of the Catalan independence process, with some exclusions: embezzlement (with personal enrichment or affecting the financial interests of the EU), high treason (with “an effective use of force against territorial integrity”), and terrorism (“that has intentionally caused serious violations of human rights”).
The law, passed on 7 March, was rejected by the right and judges, and former President Aznar said that “whoever could do something against the amnesty law, should do it”. A manual on how to paralyse the application of the amnesty law, ignoring the spirit of the legislator, was distributed to all judges from the official email of the General Council of the Judiciary (the highest body of the Spanish judiciary), which nullifies the rule of law for Catalan pro-independence supporters.
Many missing from Catalonia amnesty
As for the crime of high treason, Judge Joaquín Aguirre does not want to grant amnesty to those accused of the secret plan that, according to him, the Catalan independence movement had with Putin to destabilise Europe. He himself has made statements to German television, spreading secret information from the case to discredit the accused.
Nor did judge Manuel García-Castellón want to grant amnesty to Puigdemont and seven other people (who had gone into exile in Switzerland) for the crime of terrorism that he attributed to demonstrations in 2019.
Fortunately, the judge was forced to close the case, but not because of the application of the amnesty, but because of a procedural error. Five of the defendants were finally able to return from exile.
Nor is there any desire to grant amnesty to the seven young men who, in 2019, were arrested for terrorism in an impressive police operation that made all the news, seemingly in an attempt to influence the elections that were to be held two months later, by insinuating that the peaceful Catalan independence movement had swung towards terrorism.
Information and decontextualised pieces of video footage of the interrogations were leaked to the press in a serious breach of the secrecy of the case file. After the elections, they were released on bail. Would they have been released if they were really terrorists?
The judge has decided not to grant amnesty and to take the case to the European Court of Justice, which will further delay their final acquittal.
Embezzlement?
As for embezzlement, the Supreme Court rejected the amnesty and will keep the arrest warrants against Puigdemont, Comín and Puig (with charges of 12 years in prison!) in force.
They argue that the politicians embezzled in the organisation of the referendum with “personal enrichment” because, although they did not keep a single euro, they can be considered to have saved from putting up personal money. They also argue that they would have harmed the financial interests of the EU.
The judges never specify the amount embezzled because they would not even know what to record, but the fact is that in 2017 the finances of the government of Catalonia were intervened by the Madrid government, and the finance minister Cristóbal Montoro of the PP already assured that no public euro had been used to finance the referendum.
In reality, there was no embezzlement of any kind because the referendum was carried out on a voluntary basis and with private funds.
Moreover, the judges want to justify financial damage to the EU, using an EU directive that has not yet been approved (!) and that refers to appropriating European economic funds, which was not stated in the 2019 Supreme Court ruling, but now they argue that there was.
The positive thing is that, in this pronouncement of the Supreme Court, five magistrates have voted in favour, but one magistrate, Ana Ferrer (unequivocally anti-independence), has voted against because she considers that, by not granting the amnesty, the interpretation of the law is being twisted and sees the danger of this implying a condemnation of Spanish justice by the European Court of Human Rights.
Catalonia amnesty: granted, in part, for now
At the moment, amnesty has been granted: on the one hand, 20 activists and four Catalan public officials and, on the other hand, 50 Spanish police officers. It is doubly insulting that the amnesty cannot be applied normally to peaceful Catalan pro-independence activists, but is instead applied to the police officers who attacked them.
And the most serious thing on a human level is that the Spanish population, except for the Catalans, is justifying the abuse of justice against the Catalan independence fighters, because the media have dehumanised them and presented their objective as totally unacceptable.
By taking rights away from the Catalans, they are feeding the beast of fascism. This beast, which worries the EU, has been attacking the Catalans for centuries, and now that Catalonia is claiming political rights, this fascism is accepted across the board in the Spanish state without any objection.
In Catalonia, it has caused stupor that the high magistrates are not applying the amnesty law as it is written, but as they see fit, in a kind of judicial coup d’état against the Spanish parliament, and that nothing will happen to them for doing so.
If even the Constitutional Court allows them to do so, there will be no way to stop them in Spain, and they will have to resort to European Justice, where the cases will be delayed for years.
The only solution is for Catalonia to be like Andorra or Portugal, a new state in Europe.
This post was originally published on Canary.