The Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia has sentenced the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Meritxell Serret, to a year of disqualification from holding public office for a crime of disobedience for her involvement in the referendum of October 1 2017. The court has handed down a sentence lower than that of the former councilors previously convicted by the Supreme Court for disobedience: Meritxell Borrà s, Carles Mundó and Santi Vila on whom I imposed a sentence of one year and eight months of disqualification.
The TSJC also imposes a fine of 12,000 euros on the then Minister of Agriculture. The Chamber, made up of magistrates Fernando Lacaba, Francisco Segura and Marta Pesqueira, has imposed on Serret the same penalty that the Prosecutor’s Office had requested for, among other things, having approved the budget in March 2017 that provided items for the referendum and also having signed the decree calling for the referendum despite receiving warnings from the Constitutional Court. “His responsibility for her is linked to the disregard of the requirements received from the Constitutional Court when the defendant, in her capacity as a member of the Government of Catalonia, was warned, over and over again,” the sentence underlines.
The resolution also points out that Serret “was perfectly aware of the illegality of all the decisions that were the subject of notification and requirement by the TC, knowingly and deliberately ignoring what was ordered by said TC, deciding, therefore, not to carry out take any action to annul the contested rules, nor to make any kind of proposal to nullify them”. In addition, the court highlights that Serret herself during the trial made a “direct acknowledgment and without any denial” where she came to acknowledge the author of disobedience. In fact, she assured that before the weighted judgment of deciding between “her personal convictions in favor of the right to self-determination” or respecting the requirements of the TC, she was inclined towards the former.
Serret went to Belgium in 2017 together with Carles Puigdemont and other pro-independence leaders, but appeared in March 2021 before the examining magistrate of the case, Pablo Llarena of the Supreme Court, who referred the case to the TSJC, as he holds the status of gauged.
Serret was tried on March 29, just the day after her former colleague at the Consell Executiu de Puigdemont Clara Ponsatà returned to Barcelona from her flight to Belgium and was arrested by order of Pablo Llarena accused of the same crime of disobedience and for the which the magistrate summoned her on Monday before the Supreme Court. Ponsatà did not appear and the judge gave the parties five days to rule on whether she should arrest her.
After hearing the sentence of disqualification, Serret has reiterated that what they did “is not a crime.” “Putting urns is not a crime now or in 2017.” In a statement, the Minister of Foreign Affairs has announced that she will appeal against the decision and has announced that they will continue to “stand up to the repression.” The judicial resolution in the event that it is confirmed in the last instance by the Supreme Court would mean that Serrret must leave the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a scenario that has not yet arisen. The ministry “focuses my full attention at this time and it will continue to be so. I do not contemplate any other way.”
