Minister Félix Bolaños has reproached Junts on more than one occasion for its attacks against the 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 ruining his strategy. 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 accustomed to him always leaning in this same direction, he has an important political implication, and it usually comes up in sensitive political moments.” In the PP they have given a name to Ribera’s words: the vice president accuses the judge of “prevarication”, says Borja Sémper, and unleashes the umpteenth crusade with the judges on account of lawfare with Ribera’s disapproval in the Senate guaranteed by the majority popular.
García-Castellón’s latest order seeks 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 the 7,000 attendees at a concert and a camp in front of the University of Barcelona that not even the Electoral Board Central ordered to evacuate. The awakening of the dormant case for four years coinciding with the PSOE-Junts pact in November ends up making it clear that the purpose of the accusation is none other than to bring before the Supreme Court a case of political disqualification of the former president despite the amnesty.
This is not the first time that a crime has been shaped to apply to the independence movement. In 2014, UPyD and Clean Hands already tried to have the Parliamentary Board charged with sedition for the declaration of disconnection from 9-N. The TSJC rejected it: a violent uprising could not be equated with an unconstitutional act of a legislative Chamber. The sentences were for disobedience, but the sedition and its riots took shape in the 1-O sentence, prior to the rebellion. Violence is once again the debate of the terrorism accusation. But what violence?
The judge is waging a battle against the Prosecutor’s Office, which only sees public disorders 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 sentence that left Alberto Rodríguez without a seat and the intention to retry Arnaldo Otegi for the Bateragune case. Two presentations by Miguel Colmenero.
But the emergence of the terrorism case is what disrupts the pact of the PSOE with ERC and with Junts – always separately – on the Amnesty law. The last proposal of the Republicans before the agreement was to indicate as an exclusion the crimes of terrorism when they involve death, injuries, loss of an organ (this is how the case of Roger Español was included)… However, the text of the agreed proposal with Junts – which only the PSOE signed – opted for another formula. Exclude terrorism crimes with a final sentence. That the independentistas now maintain their amendments despite there being no agreement with the PSOE is nothing more than a political gesture in the game of mirrors maintained by the partners in Madrid.
García-Castellón’s judicial action is an unknown in the Catalan political equation. Without controlling the calendar of application of the amnesty after passing through 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 Republican offer against Salvador Illa. Any other option – Oriol Junqueras – would have been a self-amendment to the entire mandate of Aragonès and the republican management. It is Junts that maintains the mystery about its electoral poster with the door open to Puigdemont, an unorthodox “terrorist”, if the amnesty allows it and the numbers require it.
