The Junts MEP, Clara PonsatÃ, has hinted that she could return to Catalonia next week despite the fact that the Supreme Court issues a new arrest warrant to make her testify. The former Minister of the Government did not appear before Judge Pablo Llarena yesterday and she alleged that she had a job in Brussels as a parliamentarian and that she had filed a request for protection to the European Parliament.
By not testifying before the investigating judge, as he had requested, Llarena has given the defense a period of five days to develop the reasons that he adduced yesterday. Likewise, she granted this time to the Prosecutor’s Office, the State Attorney’s Office and the public prosecution so that they could pronounce themselves. “This week I’m in Brussels and this weekend, in Northern Catalonia, but then I’ll be back,” Ponsatà clarified in statements to RAC1. In the event that the Supreme Court issued a new arrest warrant after this deadline, this would not deter the intentions of the MEP, she stressed. Along the same lines, her lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, has spoken on La 2 and Rà dio 4 that the former minister “has assumed” that she can be arrested.
The MEP’s defense has not yet responded to Llarena’s request, as Boye explained, because it is studying the possible steps and the jurisprudence. Boye hopes that European legality “will be respected”, so, in his opinion, the Court would have to “suspend the proceedings and request a request”.
The Minister of Education during the 1-O of 2017 maintains her legal strategy in the political field. “The way to confront is for them to pay the costs of the repression,” he defended, in response to the ERC general secretary, Marta Vilalta, who yesterday said that going before the Court was “standing up” to the State. Ponsatà has ​​therefore ruled out that she is going to appear before the Supreme Court by her own decision because “it is not necessary for us to do the work for her.” “I don’t feel like doing it and I’m not forced to do it,” Ponsatà snapped, recalling her immunity status, while she reiterated that she does not intend to “put my face up so they can slap me.”
PonsatÃ, who was in Barcelona on Sunday signing books for Sant Jordi, alleged that yesterday he had commitments in Brussels to be absent from his statement and that he was pending a request for protection before the European Parliament. The resolution of this request is in the hands of the Legal Affairs Commission, chaired by Adrián GarcÃa-Vázquez (of Cs), for which Ponsatà has ​​recognized that he does not have “too much hope” in this demand. However, a hypothetical positive response for the MEP would make her position “clearer” before Llarena and would stop the “insistence” of the judge, according to the parliamentarian.
PonsatÃ, prosecuted for the crime of disobedience, which does not carry prison sentences, bases her strategy on the immunity she holds as a member of the European Parliament. Even so, next year elections will be held to renew the deputies of the Eurochamber, a fact that adds uncertainty to its future. The current representative of Junts has assured that she has not yet “reflected” or “decided” on whether she will repeat. “There are many months to go and many things are going to happen,” she pointed out.
