The race against the clock between the amnesty and the judicial processes had another sprint yesterday with the decision of the judge of the National Court, Manuel García-Castellón, to reject the appeal of the Prosecutor’s Office in the case of Democratic Tsunami and warn that the imputation for terrorism against the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont and the general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira, is increasingly “confined”.
This case is key for the pro-independence sector because it is one of the few processes that could be excluded from the amnesty. The reason is the crime pursued: terrorism. The public ministry believes that all the riots promoted by the Democratic Tsunami platform as a response to the sentence of the trial for sedition issued by the Supreme Court in 2019 are public disorders and, therefore, must be investigated in any ordinary court in Catalonia.
Precisely in this cause, times are important. In the first draft of the Amnesty law, before it was registered in the Congress of Deputies, terrorism was excluded as an amnesty crime as long as there were injuries or deaths. With this wording, the cause that also continues in the National Court for the Committees for the Defense of the Republic (CDR), which is accused of preparing subversive acts to achieve the independence of Catalonia, was saved.
However, in the middle of the negotiation process with the pro-independence parties for the final preparation of the text, García-Castellón dusted off the cause of the Democratic Tsunami, which had not suffered major advances since 2019. The Civil Guard delivered a report and pointed directly to Rovira as one of the driving forces behind the platform. This document was enough to reactivate the case, take a step further and directly charge Puigdemont with terrorism.
This resolution resulted in the text presented to Congress by the PSOE only excluding from the amnesty the crimes of terrorism linked to the process with a final sentence. Currently, the Democratic Tsunami affair is in an embryonic phase, under investigation, so there is plenty of time for the amnesty to be approved.
However, another derivative emerges. Once the law is approved, judges and courts will submit appeals of unconstitutionality to the Constitutional Court (TC) and preliminary questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which paralyze the processes. The case would stay where it is. This would mean that it would not move forward until the TC or the CJEU ruled.
Together and ERC know that time does count here. For now, they are trying to introduce an amendment to the Amnesty law so that terrorism is included, so they would remove the exception of “except in a final sentence” and another in which appeals before others judicial instances do not have suspensive effects. In the process of partial amendments, they have been left out for now, but they still have two more attempts, in the Justice committee and in plenary, to force a negotiation with the socialist party.
Meanwhile, the judge of the National Court, García-Castellón, has called on the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, presided over by Manuel Marchena, to investigate Puigdemont, given that he is a member of the European Parliament. If competition is admitted, the High Court would be the only instance, so that, once the investigation is over, the prosecution and the oral trial phase would come. This sentence would already be final.
There are still a few months left for the amnesty to be approved, given that the Senate procedure is still missing, and with the latest reform of its regulations promoted by the PP, which has an absolute majority in the Upper House, the procedure can last two months month.
For the time being, García-Castellón continues to do diligence. In this final interlocutory hearing, the judge analyzes the reports sent by the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Civil Guard, Aena and other court proceedings. According to this instructor, the crime of terrorism is justified by the riots at El Prat airport, where twenty officers were injured and one died. The latter died of natural causes, although García-Castellón believes they could have been caused by the tension of the siege at the airport.
This action by Tsunami was, according to the interlocutory, “planned, deliberate and publicized through social networks”. It caused – continues the resolution – a “direct impact on traffic and air safety”, to the point that the Mossos had to manage the relays of the air controllers “to avoid catastrophic consequences”.
The judge believes that the terrorism investigation must continue due to “the strength, quantity and clarity of the evidence”. For this reason, he rejects the claim of the Prosecutor’s Office that the matter goes to an ordinary court for an alleged crime of public disorder against those arrested in these riots. For García-Castellón, it was terrorism, and behind it was a “leader”, Carles Puigdemont, and a “political coordinator”, Marta Rovira.
It is still pending that, on the one hand, the Supreme Court takes a position on the investigation into the leader of Junts, and, on the other, that the criminal chamber of the National Court resolves on the competence of García-Castellón.
