Minister Félix Bolaños has criticized Junts more than once for his attacks on judges. In public and in private. As head of Justice, he tries to preserve institutional relations with the judiciary, but the investigation of the Tsunami case by Manuel García-Castellón is setting his strategy on fire. Without the need for Carles Puigdemont to make a single tweet, Vice President Teresa Ribera is the one who described the judge’s actions: “We are used to the fact that he always leans in this same direction, he has an important political involvement, and usually goes out to collation in sensitive political moments”. The PP has named Ribera’s words: the vice-president accuses the judge of “prevarication”, says Borja Sémper, and unleashes the umpteenth crusade against the lawfare with Ribera’s reprimand in the Senate guaranteed by the popular majority.
García-Castellón’s last interlocutory attempt to support an unusual accusation of terrorism against Puigdemont and Marta Rovira. The “weapons” of the demonstrations recall the dangerous “Fairy trap” against the police discovered in the 1-O trial and criminalize the 7,000 attendees at a concert and a campout in front of the University of Barcelona that neither the Electoral Board Central ordered to evacuate. The awakening of the cause dormant for four years coinciding with the PSOE-Junts pact in November ends up showing that the purpose of the accusation is none other than to bring to the Supreme Court a cause of political disqualification of the former president despite the amnesty
It is not the first time that a crime has been modeled to apply it to independence. In 2014, UPyD and Manos Limpiasja tried to have the Bureau of Parliament accused of sedition for the declaration of disconnection of the 9-N. The TSJC dismissed it: a violent uprising could not be equated with an unconstitutional act of a chamber legislative The convictions were for disobedience, but the sedition and its tumults took root in the sentence of 1-O, prior to the rebellion. Violence is once again the debate of the accusation of terrorism. But what violence?
The judge is waging a battle against the Prosecutor’s Office, which only sees public disorder in the post-sentence demonstrations of 1-O; and against the majority of the investiture. Does the judge act like a lone wolf in the National Court? If his safety net is the Supreme Court, this would not be his best political week. The Constitutional Court has overturned the conviction that left Alberto Rodríguez without a seat and the claim to retry Arnaldo Otegi for the Bateragune case. Two presentations by Miguel Colmenero.
But the outbreak of the terrorism case is what upsets the PSOE’s pact with ERC and Junts -always separately- on the Amnesty law. The last proposal of the Republicans before the agreement was to point out as exclusion the crimes of terrorism when they involve death, injuries, loss of an organ (this included the case of Roger Español)… But the text of the proposal agreed with Junts – which only the PSOE signed – opted for another formula. Exclude terrorism offenses with a final sentence. That the independentists now maintain their amendments even if there is no agreement with the PSOE is nothing more than a political gesture in the game of mirrors that the partners in Madrid maintain.
The judicial action of García-Castellón is an unknown in the Catalan political equation. Without controlling the amnesty application schedule prior to passage by the Senate with a PP majority, ERC has decided to put an end to the false uncertainty about the candidacy of Pere Aragonès, who will take advantage of the last year of the legislature to shore up the offer republican regarding Salvador Illa. Any other option – Oriol Junqueras – would have been a complete self-amendment to the Aragonès mandate and the Republican management. It is Junts that maintains the unknown about its electoral poster with the door open to Puigdemont, an unorthodox “terrorist”, if the amnesty allows it and the numbers require it.
