The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court has confirmed the conviction for the crime of disobedience imposed on the former CUP councilor in Lleida for not removing yellow ribbons from a window of the City Hall during the electoral period of the April 2019 general elections, despite being required several times to do so by the Electoral Board. Specifically, they were four yellow ribbons that hung from the windows of the office of the anti-capitalist formation in Paeria.
The Supreme Court dismisses Juvillà’s appeal against the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia, handed down on December 14, 2021, which sentenced him to a fine of 1,080 euros and special disqualification from holding elective public positions for a period of time. of 6 months.
The case has many parallels with the case that disqualified Quim Torra as president of the Generalitat. It was Ciudadanos who at the time filed the complaint with the Electoral Board, who required the now former councilor to withdraw it “without delay.” Finally, it had to be the Mossos d’Esquadra who had to remove the yellow ribbons. The case passed to the TSJC once Juvillà was elected as a deputy to the Parliament in the last elections. In January 2022, the Central Electoral Board issued a resolution withdrawing the certificate from Juvillà, considering that he could not occupy his seat after the disqualification sentence for disobedience.
Now, two years later, the Supreme Court confirms that conviction. In its ruling, for which Judge Juan Ramón Berdugo was the speaker, the Supreme Court highlights that “the appellant used his status, first, as a councilor and later, president of the Municipal Group, to place such symbols in those City Hall offices. , his office on the top floor, officially assigned, violating the duty of political neutrality enshrined in article 50 of the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime” for electoral periods.
Regarding the appellant’s allegation about the violation of his ideological freedom, the Supreme Court points out that “the purpose of the process is not to analyze the appellant’s conviction from the perspective of ideological freedom and expression, since as a citizen he is free to make demonstrations or acts that reflect their political identity. The object is the disobedience of the repeated orders of a constitutional body whose function is to guarantee transparency and cleanliness in the electoral processes that the neutrality of the powers and Public Administrations requires.
“The legitimate exercise of a right,” adds the ruling, “does not constitute a patent so that under its protection, all the acts that are carried out under the assumptions of the precept can be justified, but it is necessary that they be within the orbit of their due expression, use and scope, because otherwise they constitute an abuse capable and sufficient to devalue the excuse and to reach a definition of responsibility.”
The high court insists that the question raised in the appeal is whether the appellant, as a councilor of the City Council and member of a municipal group, could be required by the Zonal Electoral Board to comply with the agreement that ordered the removal of the estelada and the yellow ribbons, placed from the window corresponding to the office of said municipal group, on the main façade and visible from the outside. And the answer must be affirmative.
Thus, the Supreme Court highlights that “the appellant omits that the display of those symbols – estelada and yellow ribbons, whose political and ideological significance cannot be questioned – did not occur in a partisan act of electoral campaign, elections in which the political formation to which the accused belongs, but permanently in a public office of the City Council.”
