On November 10, President Pedro Sánchez appeared in a prime-time television interview to announce his desire to repeal the crime of sedition. He stressed that this was a necessary measure to standardize the Spanish Penal Code to the regulation that exists on this subject in the legal system of the countries around us. In a few weeks, the reform was approved and in mid-January it came into force, after raising a lot of dust in the ranks of the right, also in the Socialist Party itself and even in a part of the independence movement.
With the crime of sedition repealed, it was necessary to review the sentence handed down by the Supreme Court in October 2019, in which it had sentenced the political and social leaders who organized the independence referendum to between 9 and 13 years in prison. October 1, 2017 celebrated in Catalonia. Of the nine sentenced to prison terms, five were for the crime of sedition and four were for this crime and for embezzlement.
This week, the Supreme Court has made public the resolution by which it reviews the sentences in light of the reform. From legal logic, the elimination of the crime of sedition must entail the elimination of the sentence imposed. If there is no crime, there can be no sentence, and this has been the case for Carme Forcadell, Jordi Cuixart, Jordi Sànchez, Josep Rull and Joaquim Forn, who have seen their sentences of between 9 and 11 and a half years extinguished. However, the creative interpretation of the Criminal Chamber has led its lordships to keep intact the sentences of 13 and 12 years in prison for the other four convicted, Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull and Dolors Bassa, for the act of having also been sentenced for an alleged crime of embezzlement.
If you do not understand it, it is not because you are missing any legal key. It’s just incomprehensible. Let’s look at an example: the former president of Parliament was sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison for the crime of sedition and the former minister Dolors Bassa was sentenced to 12 years for accumulating the crime of sedition and embezzlement. Well, with the crime of sedition repealed, Forcadell is left with a zero-year sentence and Bassa is still sentenced to 12 years for embezzlement. It turns out that the most serious crime was sedition, but when this is eliminated it turns out that it has no effect. Do you understand? Me neither.
Since 2017, a part of the judiciary has considered that the political power, at that time with Mariano Rajoy at the helm, was too soft against the independence movement and decided to play its own cards with the idea of ??resolving what, in its opinion, was an unacceptable neglect of functions. The end justified the means and there are dozens of judicial resolutions that have twisted the facts to obtain accusations and convictions that reality hardly supports.
Later, with Pedro Sánchez in Moncloa, the granting of partial pardons, first, and the repeal of the crime of sedition, later, has been experienced as an amendment to the entire political power to the action of the Supreme Court. For this reason, read in this key, it is very little surprising that they have now taken advantage of the sentence review process to try to leave on paper what the absolute majority of the Congress of Deputies has legislated.
The Supreme Court, maintaining the sentences despite the repeal of the crime, has wanted to say loud and clear that it does not accept what the legislature says when it does not like the result. Although the convicted persons experience it in their own flesh, the main objective was to disrupt the approved reform, issuing a resolution against the policy of Pedro Sánchez. And we will see if the same happens with the pardons granted by the Government, whose appeals are still pending to be resolved also in the Supreme Court, although in a different room. The Court received them as a blow to the sentence and it cannot be ruled out that, with any unusual interpretation, they will also back down, giving another slap to the decisions made from the executive branch.
In the end, it will be the European Court of Human Rights who will arbitrate the decisions made by the Supreme Court of the Kingdom of Spain, but whatever the answer, the damage will already be done.
