In Spain, a political storm precedes trial of Catalan independence leaders

With just hours to go before Spain’s Supreme Court opens the trial of the leaders of the failed Catalan secession bid, all political bridges between Madrid and Barcelona appear to be have been burnt.

But according to some, there is still room for things to get even worse.

The Catalan justice chief, Ester Capella, on Friday reiterated a message that the independence movement has been repeating for months: guilty verdicts will only deepen the Catalan crisis.

Starting on Tuesday, 12 people will stand trial at the Supreme Court for their role in facilitating the illegal independence referendum of October 1, 2017 and the unilateral independence declaration subsequently passed by separatist parties in the Catalan parliament (see box).

The breakdown of talks between the central and Catalan governments last week only adds to the pressure on a trial that separatist leaders have worked hard to discredit, arguing that convictions are a given, and that the European courts will ultimately shine a light on the problems with the Spanish justice system in general, and with the Supreme Court in particular.

And on Sunday, tens of thousands of people marched to protest the government’s alleged concessions to the separatists and to demand a snap election. Whether this happens will largely depend on the outcome of a congressional vote on Wednesday to either support or reject the 2019 budget plan.

Never before had so much suspicion been cast over a court and its judges – but then again, never before had a trial held so much sway over Spain’s political future, internal cohesiveness and international prestige.

In an effort to maximize transparency and avoid accusations of bias, the Supreme Court will allow live coverage of the hearings, which are expected to last around three months.

But the seven judges – six men and one woman – who will sit on a panel presided by Chief Justice Manuel Marchena know that this will probably not be enough to undo the negative image of the Spanish justice system that the independence movement has already created in the minds of a considerable number of their European colleagues, helped by the passive diplomatic attitude of the previous government of Mariano Rajoy of the conservative Popular Party (PP).

“The independence movement has managed to spread the idea across Europe that political dissidence is punished with jail in Spain,” says Álvaro García Ortiz, spokesman for the Union of Progressive Prosecutors of Spain (UPF). “To Spanish judges and prosecutors, this is a tragedy, because we are losing all the prestige that we have earned over the last 40 years. There are already international forums where they put us on the same level as Poland or Turkey.”

García Ortiz once wrote a letter to French judges in which he used a bitter kind of humor to try to deconstruct the Catalan independence movement’s most serious accusations against Spanish democracy.

“No, we Spaniards have not gone crazy, nor have we gone back 40 years when we buried a dictator whom most of the population never even knew. […] Let’s get serious: this country is as good or as bad as any other neighboring country, with a democracy that could manifestly bear improvement, just like all Western democracies […]. Let’s take a look at rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. Between 1959 and 2017, Spain, with a population of 46 million, was found at fault in 103 rulings; France, with a population of 66 million, was ruled against on 728 occasions over the same period.”

The fact that defendants have been held in pretrial custody has been used as an argument against Spain’s justice system.

“How are you going to release someone who is accused of crimes that could mean 25 years in prison and who does not have the most basic trust in the honor of the court?” asks a high-placed official at the Supreme Court. “It makes sense to think that some of them at least will try to flee, just like [Carles] Puigdemont.” The former Catalan premier left Spain in the wake of the unilateral declaration of independence, and is still wanted for arrest. Six other separatist politicians involved in the independence bid also fled the country to avoid trial.