Neither impunity nor forgetfulness

We warn that the unprecedented aggression of separatism to the 1978 Constitution would not go unpunished and so it has been. This is the first thing that matters to point out. After a long and thorough judicial process, retransmitted with total transparency and observant of all the guarantees required of a rule of law, yesterday we met the most important sentence in the history of the current democratic period, signed unanimously by all magistrates.

The seven members of the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court sentenced the promoters of the independence coup of 2017 to considerable jail and disqualification sentences , graduating the punishment based on their responsibility for the facts. The message that the democratic State defends itself and will defend itself from those who try to overflow it clearly reaches the nationalist world.

However. Such a decisive sentence, called to establish jurisprudence in the most critical area of ​​our constitutional order - that which affects the territorial unit, under constant tension by peripheral nationalisms - required a particularly consistent foundation and a recognizable factual account of the facts. all the Spaniards who attended distressed the events of two years ago, a logical corollary of a plan established long ago.

What we all saw in those days was the attack orchestrated by the leaders of the Generalitat against the Constitution, which was repealed and replaced by a wicked Law of Transition in the Parliament to enlighten an alternative regime of arbitrary power. And what we saw also went to nationalism usurping all the springs of the State in Catalonia - from the Mossos to public television, from education to autonomous financing - to direct the force of the mass towards the insurrection through a strongly subsidized associative framework whose The only and proclaimed objective was to impose its secession project through the facts. We saw all this, we witnessed the violence that accompanied the subversion, and this was recorded by the investigating judge Pablo Llarena in his summary and the then attorney general José Manuel Maza in his complaint. The sentence seems to devote more efforts to denying the rebellion than to justify the sedition, when in its day the Appeals Chamber - integrated by Miguel Colmenero, Alberto Jorge Barreiro and Francisco Monterde - closed ranks with the Llarena indictment for rebellion.

That is why it is very worrying that the text of the sentence, even if it shows the violence exerted, now denies that its real purpose was that which its own promoters confessed: the subversion of the current constitutional order. The Supreme says that everything we saw was a mere alteration of public order, although in its most serious form. It should be remembered that the essential distinction between rebellion and sedition lies in the finalist element of the crime. In the case of the first, it is committed with the objective of "repealing, suspending or modifying, in whole or in part, the Constitution" or "declaring the independence of a part of the national territory". That is, the legislator does not require that independence be consumed to typify the rebellion: it is enough to orient the behavior towards those ends to incur it. And the fact is that independence was declared in the Parliament. And that was the goal set in the so-called White Paper for the National Transition that Llarena used pertinently for his instruction, because the process does not start in 2017 as the Supreme is now trying.

To overcome these contradictions, the sentence argues that "the indisputable episodes of violence" were not aimed at achieving effective independence but "at creating a climate or a scenario in which further negotiation becomes more viable." From the right to decide to the right to press: this is all the process described by the Supreme. He says that everything was a "decoy", a hoax to put pressure on the Rajoy government and get a binding referendum. That is, the Supreme departs from the facts to dive into the intentions of the coup plotters and assumes the thesis of their defenses, according to which everything was a bluff, a "rhetorical deployment", a "declaration of ineffective and symbolic independence", a "legally unworkable reverie". But we believe that if it was not feasible, it was precisely because the State reacted. Because it was necessary to apply article 155 to restore constitutional order after the intervention of the King - whose speech was directed to the restoration of constitutional order, not only public order - and the escape of more than 5,000 companies in a scenario of uncertainty and legal uncertainty. Why did they leave if everything was a decoy? Of course, instrumental violence for secession was insufficient: if it had been sufficient and had external recognition, they would never have been tried. These are the facts and no sentence should be able to reinterpret them in the light of the most innocent version of their intentions.

We can understand that the Supreme values ​​and wants to anticipate the reaction of Europe when the separatists take the ruling to Strasbourg. We can understand that Manuel Marchena has boldly pursued a unanimity that shields the prestige of the institution not only in front of external bodies but also before the Constitutional Court, where Cándido Conde-Pumpido had already taken positions against the rebellion ruling. But we cannot understand that the price charged by this unanimity is the truth of the facts, distorted in the best case because of an outdated criminal type that needs to be updated - as Pedro Sánchez requested in the opposition - and at worst for political reasons. Otherwise wrong reasons, because the policy of appeasement only serves to encourage the repetition of new reveries that end in coups and ruptures of coexistence.

To all this is added the outrage that arouses the Supreme's refusal to respond to the Prosecutor's request so that the convicted cannot benefit from the third degree until they serve half the sentence. Certainly, it is not the fault of the Supreme Court that the penitentiary powers were ceded to the Generalitat in its day, but neither should the Chamber ignore that circumstance, which is decisive when administering justice effectively. Now it is up to Torra to grant a semi-freedom regime whose effect on the confidence of the Spaniards in the equality of all before the law can be lethal. Of course, if the facts are not respected, how the penalties will be fully complied with. In this sense, we can only share the regret that the Prosecutor is currently experiencing.

As for Puigdemont, Judge Llarena shows consistency by reactivating the Euroorder against Puigdemont. It is to be expected that even the Belgian Justice dares to disregard a final ruling of the highest court of a member state of the European Union. The alternative would destroy the already battered credit of the Euro-order figure.

Democratic legality was violated by independence politicians, and they will pay for it. The work of the judges - both the punishment and the reasoning on which they have been based to impose it - now corresponds to judge the citizens. They are the sovereigns of their nation. They do not expect the Supreme to offer "political solutions", as the court itself rejects in the sentence; but of course they know that the separatist project is still alive, and that the exit does not happen by degrading to symbolic a very real attempt to subvert the democratic order. Reducing costs only serves to stimulate recidivism.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Supreme Court
• constitutional Court
• European Union
• Pedro Sanchez
• Mossos d'Esquadra
• Mariano Rajoy
• Manuel Marchena
• Europe
• Catalonia
• Quim Torra
• Oriol Junqueras
• Unilateral Declaration of Independence (DUI)
• Pablo Llarena Count
• Editorial
• Carles Puigdemont

EditorialA luxury hotel for the coup

610.8 km Back to the roads

SpainThe weak unanimity of Marchena and the nougat of Junqueras, at home