The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has sentenced the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Meritxell Serret, to one year of disqualification for the cause of the process. Serret fled to Belgium along with Carles Puigdemont after independence was declared. In March 2021, when she was warned that she would only be charged with disobedience, she returned and appeared before Judge Pablo Llarena, who released her. And in October 2022, Pere Aragonès appointed her Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Generalitat. In March of this year, the TSJC tried her for the organization of the 2017 referendum, and the verdict was handed down yesterday. The court imposed a one-year disqualification and a fine of 12,000 euros. The sentence is lower than the one handed down by the Supreme Court against the former councilors who were accused of disobedience: Meritxell Borrà s, Carles Mundó and Santi Vila, who were sentenced to one year and eight months of disqualification.
The judicial decision calls into question the continuity of Serretal at the head of the ministry, despite the fact that both she and President Aragonès are not considering leaving before the ruling becomes final. “Serret will continue in office, since the sentence is not final”, said the president yesterday.
The court, made up of magistrates Fernando Lacaba, Francisco Segura and Marta Pesqueira, has imposed the full penalty requested by the Prosecutor’s Office, taking into account that Serret, according to the judges, approved in 2017, when she was Minister of Agriculture, the budget that he predicted matches for the referendum and signed the decree calling for the referendum despite receiving warnings from the Constitutional Court. “Her responsibility is linked to the disregard of the requests received from the Constitutional Court when the accused, in her capacity as a member of the Government of Catalonia, was warned time and time again,” the sentence underlines.
In addition, the resolution points out that Serret “was fully aware of the illegality of all the decisions that were the subject of notification and request by the TC. He consciously and deliberately ignored the TC’s orders and decided not to take any action to nullify the contested rules, nor to make any kind of proposal to declare them null and void.” In addition, the court highlights that Serret herself, during the trial, made a “direct acknowledgment and without any denial” in which she somehow acknowledged that she was the author of disobedience. In fact, he assured that, faced with the weighty judgment of deciding between “his personal convictions in favor of the right to self-determination” or respecting the requirements of the TC, he was leaning towards the first option.
Just the day after she was judged, her ex-companion in Puigdemont’s Executive Council Clara Ponsatà returned to Barcelona from her escape to Belgium and was arrested by order of Llarena accused of the same crime of disobedience, for which the magistrate cite before the Supreme Court on Monday, although she did not appear.
After learning of the disqualification sentence, Serret reiterated that calling the 1-O referendum “is not a crime”. “Putting ballot boxes is not a crime either now or in 2017”. This judicial resolution, in case it is confirmed in the last instance by the Supreme Court, would mean that Serret would have to leave the Department of Foreign Affairs, a scenario that is not yet considered. The ministry “focuses my full attention at the moment and will continue to do so. I don’t foresee any other path,” he said.
