Catalonia on trial

In chess, whoever corners the king wins. It doesn’t matter how many forces each player ends up with. If the king cannot move, he loses. Overthrowing the king is the ultimate end of the game, and the rest of the counters are expendable. Two young men wearing hoods and balaclavas on the street in Barcelona played a game of chess. They had come to the so-called Picnic for the Republic and played to destroy the enemy king. Without wanting to say their names or their age („twenty-something”), they discover their faces and respond kindly to the questions once the game is over.

It is the night of Sunday, October 20, 2019. Six days have passed since the sentence convicting nine Catalan pro-independence leaders to between 9 and 13 years in prison for the independence process that culminated in a referendum and a declaration of independence in October 2017.

Six days of citizen protests against a sentence considered unfair by independentistas.

Six days of road and railway cuts, police charges, …

riots, …

injuries and arrests, …

looting and even, for a few hours, the blockade of Barcelona airport.

The image of the two young separatists playing chess, with the face covered while being photographed, reminds the participants in the violent acts during the whole week: young men with their faces covered. They have attended almost every protest event of the week and say the police have beaten them up.

„There has been violence, and self-defence and the violence has also been reactive to disproportionality and police abuse. Some people make barricades to defend themselves, and others destroy by destroying,” says one of the young people, disassociating themselves from the looting of shops, who says he sees that as an attack on an innocent civilian population.

„Every time a stone is thrown, the police have to protect themselves and cannot carry it.

Every time a barricade is lit and the police have to stop to remove it; the police cannot run over people. If there is a rain of stones, the police cannot attack. It is the difference between gratuitous violence and violence in response to disproportionate attacks by the police,” defends the other.

And although violence has marked the media agenda, the riots have covered up massive demonstrations against the sentencing of separatist leaders. The violence that some consider as delegitimizing the independence movement but without which it would not have been able to attract the focus of the international press.

Young people do not have a solution to the Catalan situation. Still, they do believe that it is not the one used so far by the government: the temporary suspension of Catalonia’s autonomy after the declaration of independence in 2017, criminalisation and sentences such as the one that caused these protests?

Ainoa is 20 years old, studies Tourism and also works as an event hostess. This young woman has gone with other friends to the Picnic for the Republic „to get the condemned out of prison” since the sentence is „unfair” because it goes against the only politicians who have fulfilled what they promised: a referendum of independence. „Just because you burn containers you can’t criminalise youth,” she said. „What have we achieved by making silent demonstrations?

Her vision of the future is pessimistic. She believes that the state of emergency will be applied in Catalonia and that the release of what she considers political prisoners will not be achieved. She criticises both the Catalan and Spanish governments.

„If you support independence you cannot criminalise those who burn containers,” she says, in a clear allusion to the independence politicians who have condemned the violence in the streets. „I prefer to build a barricade if I am going to be beaten by a policeman for demonstrating because my safety is a priority in front of a container. Lampposts or containers do not make Barcelona, but by people,” Ainhoa said.

There is another Catalonia that did not appear in international media those days. The Catalonia that did not take the streets to protest nor has broken the normality. A Catalonia that also feels as Spanish and that represents approximately half of the population. 46.2% of Catalans want Catalonia to remain part of Spain, compared to 46.1% of those who wish it to be an independent state, according to a 2018 survey. Compared to these two blocks, 7.7% who do not know or do not have an opinion.

Although this survey shows a Catalan population divided into two opposite poles, since at least 2012 there is a clear majority in the Catalan Parliament in favour of the so-called right to decide and since 2015 a pro-independence majority that, in 2017, called for an independence referendum and declared Catalonia as an independent state.

After the serious riot during the general strike on October 18, 2019, in which a policeman was seriously wounded, a group of people went to the headquarters of the Spanish police in Barcelona on the morning of Sunday, October 20, 2019, to congratulate and support the security forces.

Dressed with the Spanish flag, they were given bunches of flowers and pizzas. Some of the cars that pass in front whistle to support the Spanish police. Some separatists criticise them from the other side of the street.

As in the protest for the Catalan republic, many do not want to give their name or be photographed for fear of reprisals by the pro-independence activists. The one who does show his face is Félix García, a middle-aged neighbour from Barcelona, who came to support policemen „who are risking their lives”, to whom he has given a bouquet. His assessment of the Spanish Supreme Court’s sentence is that it should have been tougher on subsequent events because „the cause of these riots are those who are in jail”. Garcia calls for action from the Spanish government and wants the law to be enforced and „to do what has to be done to stop all this”.

„We have to stop the Catalan government”, asks Félix García, who believes that the pro-independence people are „very violent” and make afraid those who feel Spanish in Catalonia in a „fascist” way. Nevertheless, García believes that support for independence is beginning to decline after years on the rise.

For the Spanish nationalists interviewed in front of the headquarters of the Spanish police, a hypothetical and for them impossible independence would mean the ruin of Catalonia and the flee of the big companies that continue to operate in the region.

Mari Carmen Lorenzo Fernández, a woman in her 60s from Barcelona who runs a business with her husband, blue hair, eyelashes and eyes painted in the same colour, came to show her support for police officers who „have their hands tied by the Spanish government.”

This voter, affiliate and candidate of the far-right party Vox, is frustrated by not being able to do anything in the face of violence that made her cry the whole week. The elimination of autonomies, not only in Catalonia but throughout Spain, is the solution to the conflict for Mari Carmen Lorenzo, who is also a former Spanish taekwondo champion.

Catalonia, one year later

Much has happened in a year in Catalonia after the judgement that was announced on October 14, 2019.

The Supreme Court of Spain has removed Catalonia’s regional president Quim Torra from public office for one year and a half. On September 28, the judges uphold last year’s decision by a lower court ruling that Mr Torra was guilty of disobedience concerning his refusal to remove yellow ribbons in solidarity with those condemned in the trial from official buildings. He had came Catalan president in May 2018 following the departure of his predecessor Carles Puigdemont.

Unidas Podemos, a left-wing party, joined Spain’s ruling socialist party forming a coalition government.

Also, the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, on the run from Spanish justice that wants to trial him the acts of 2017, is now officially a member of the European Parliament. More lately, alleged corruption by Spain’s emeritus king has been made public.

And, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 5,750 deaths in Catalonia and more than 30,000 hospitalizations, according to official data. After a hot autumn of mobilizations for the sentence, a confined spring came under a state of alarm decreed by the Spanish government to stop the transmission of the virus. Even the Spanish Army was deployed in Catalonia.

The health crisis has left aside the so-called territorial or national question. However, there have been some political arguments about which administration was responsible for the collapse of the health system.

But let us return to the old normality. To a world without the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

Five and a half months before the Sentence, Spanish general election had been held, on April 28 2019. However, the Socialist party (PSOE), which won most seats at the vote, fell short of a majority. After months of negotiations, the parties failed to reach an agreement, and Spain repeated its general election, holding the country’s fourth general election in four years and the second in a year, on November 10. Almost a month after the sentence, the Socialists received 28.7% of support and 123 seats in the repeat polls and this time they teamed up with left-wing party Unidas Podemos. The repeat election brought a similar scenario to pro-independence parties. Meanwhile, the far-right Vox party, which had asked in the trial for up to 74 years in prison for the pro-independence leaders, became the third force in parliament.

Miriam Vehí, a congresswoman in Madrid for the anti-capitalist independence party CUP, says the October protests „despite not having a concrete demand”, have resulted in a negotiation table between the Catalan and Spanish governments, „something unprecedented since the independence process began”. This meeting happened only once at the end of February and attended both the Spanish President Pedro Sánchez and Catalan President Quim Torra, as well as several members of both governments. Three weeks later, Spain was confined by the coronavirus crisis. The pandemic ended the commitment to meet again once a month. The two administrations have not met again. Nor in a telematic way.

„The situation is one of total stagnation from a repressive perspective. We continue to have prisoners and exiled people. There has not been a referendum, and there are no perspectives that this dialogue table will give a concrete fruit”, denounces Vehí. Her party decided to run for the first time in the Spanish elections of November 2019 because in the face of „the political blockade and increased repression” and because „we considered that a voice for independence with discourse and practice of protest was necessary”. The two pro-independence parties in the Catalan government, according to Vehí, do not break with the Spanish state.

Isabel Elbal, the lawyer of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, believes that „independence is not prohibited anywhere in the world except in Spain”.

Puigdemont’s defender stresses that the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, a body of the United Nations, concluded that the deprivation of liberty of the Catalan pro-independence politicians and activists before their conviction was arbitrary and that the Supreme Court that finally condemned them was not a „competent court”. Furthermore, according to this group, the acts for which they were tried were „carried out in the exercise of freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association and political participation, over several years”.

Puigdemont fled to Belgium to avoid arrest, and he has been a MEP since the European elections of 2019. Puigdemont and four of his former government advisors reside now in other European Union countries. They declared themselves in default before the Spanish justice system. They will be arrested if they return to Spain. This August, a Belgian judge handed down an appealable sentence denying the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by Spain against former councillor Lluis Puig because the Supreme Court is not competent to request his arrest and surrender. This is the first time that a judge has considered this thesis defended by the lawyers of the pro-independence politicians.

This sentence changes everything, according to Elbal, by considering that the Supreme Court was not the one who should have judged the independentistas already condemned and in prison either. „All the violations committed by the Supreme Court have been revealed,” she adds. The Supreme Court has not responded to Outriders’ questions about this sentence, but one of the prosecutors of this court who participated in the trial has expressed himself publicly.

According to the Spanish public prosecutor Javier Zaragoza, this sentence is a „Belgian judicial nonsense” that uses „both incredible and unacceptable reasoning”. The prosecutor considers that the Belgian justice system has failed to comply with European law and considers it is likely that the Belgian state will be condemned again for this by the European Court of Human Rights. It already happened in 2019: Belgium was convicted after refusing to hand over a member of the Basque pro-independence armed group ETA to Spain.

The defendant of Isabel Elbal now has the impunity conferred on him by being an MEP. But this legal protection could be lifted by the end of the year if the European Parliament so decides. If this happens, „the Supreme Court would have to carry out another European Arrest Warrant in Belgium, and we are back to square one. The Belgian judge would have to decide whether to hand over President Puigdemont to the Spanish courts for trial. If the Supreme Court were to retake this EAW, the same Belgian judge would have to say that the Supreme Court is not competent. It’s Groundhog Day”.

Puigdemont’s lawyer asks for the process to be dejudicialized. „Criminal law no longer has any meaning. It has only served to highlight all the violations committed by the Supreme Court”. Elbal requests that the politicians should sit down to talk. The table gathered in February did not include any representative of Puigdemont, the lawyer denounces.

Ángel Gómez is an agent of the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan autonomous police force, and president of the association Union of Mossos for the Spanish Constitution. Gómez believes that Catalonia is currently on „the verge of a civil conflict of catastrophic and dramatic dimensions,” a problem that would threaten „all regions of Spain”. For him, independence „is part of a program of destabilization by leftist nostalgics, supporters of outdated ideologies camouflaged under feminist flags, of homosexual, vegan, animalist and anti-nuclear collectives”.

This conflictive vision is also rejected by the anti-capitalist politician Vehí: „Those who are most interested in promoting the vision of two blocks in Catalonia are the ones that systematically block the democratic way out. The referendum is a device to avoid splitting the society in two and to vote if a different national perspective is wanted”.

Nonetheless, the Catalan police officer also denies that there is a Catalan conflict but „a generalized subversion fomented from the illicit autonomous institutions, but consented by the central government. A corrupt political class kidnaps the Spanish nation with gangland and Bolshevist overtones”. For him, there is not half of the population that is pro-independence either, but „social activism based on a political fiction instigated by the regime and its subsidized media, as well as by an indoctrinating school, whose ends and means are illegal”.

According to Gómez, the street mobilization is instigated „by the political cryptocommissars camouflaged as teachers in high schools and universities and the media. Among this mass, they have taken in activists of an anarchofascist sign and attitude, who are the ones who are starting the escalation of violence to achieve repressive actions aimed at re-establishing the rule of law”. In this way, says the police officer, they manage to „project victimhood and gather international support from countries that are very ignorant of the political and social situation in Spain and whose perception of Spain is based on clichés from 60 years ago”.

One year after that October 14, when a sentence was made public and raised the level of street protests, a respiratory virus born in China emptied the Catalan streets for months and broke an attempt to bring together central and autonomous power. Meanwhile, on the pitch of the judicial return match, Europe, the two legal teams are beginning to warm up. El Clásico Madrid-Barcelona will be arbitrated by a Strasbourg referee: the European Court of Human Rights.