Four years after the convictions of the leaders of the process, Europe has given the go-ahead to thoroughly review the judicial response to what happened in the fall of 2017 in Catalonia, fully impacting the open debate in Spain about a possible amnesty for all the accused civilly and criminally for these facts, on which the eventual investiture of Pedro Sánchez depends to a large extent if, as is foreseeable, Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s fails next week.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has accepted the appeals of the nine prisoners of the process, convicted in October 2019 of sedition for the organization of the 1-O referendum, which opens the way for this court, which has the function of ensuring respect for human rights during judicial processes, enters into assessing whether the pro-independence leaders, among whom is the former vice-president of the Generalitat Oriol Junqueras, had a fair trial in the Supreme Court (TS) and for which they ended up being sentenced to prison terms of up to 13 years.
The Central Government, through the State Attorney’s Office, will have to pronounce, since the legal services of the State will have to take sides on the legality and proportionality of the judicial process open to the Supreme Court, and that it has already been endorsed by the Constitutional Court. The Strasbourg-based court has set a battery of questions that the parties must answer before January 12. Among other issues, the ECtHR asks Spain if the Supreme Court made an extensive application of the crime of sedition contrary to that of Human Rights and if the convicted were so for having exercised their legitimate right to freedom of association and expression. It also raises whether the TS violated the right of defense of the convicted, for having been sentenced without evidence and without having provided them with access to the summary during the process.
The pro-independence leaders, among other aspects, alleged before the ECtHR that their rights to freedom of expression and assembly had been violated. Among their arguments, the appellants claim that the Spanish judiciary violated their political rights when it denied them the right to participate in the electoral campaign of December 2017; or not being able to participate in the ordinary activity of the Parliament because they were prosecuted for rebellion, a crime that involves violence and which was ruled out in the sentence, and consequently being suspended and losing the acts of deputies.
In the case of Jordi Turull, who became a candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat, he alleges that he suffered an abuse of rights by the judge investigating the case, Pablo Llarena, when he sent him to the prison to avoid the possible investiture. “His imprisonment was part of a coordinated action by the Spanish public authorities in order that a pro-independence deputy could not access the presidency of Catalonia, since, by virtue of his imprisonment, the plaintiff had to give up his candidacy “, he alleges.
The ECtHR’s decision comes at a key moment. For years the president of the Spanish Government, now in office, Pedro Sánchez, has been working to reduce tensions and for the reunion in Catalonia, and in this framework he approved in June 2021 the pardons of the nine pro-independence leaders who were in prison after conviction for sedition. It was a partial pardon and it was avoided to release them from the disqualification, which prevents them from participating in political life. The amnesty was then discarded, given that it was an option with certain doubts of unconstitutionality, as recognized at the time from the Ministry of Justice, led at that time by.
An amnesty that is now back in the limelight. In this sense, parliamentary sources affirm that from next week, with the political scenario more flattened for the current head of the Executive in functions, the final push will be given to the text that emerges from the negotiations between several political actors for this measure that Carles Puigdemont demands in particular. And this happens in a scenario in which the old socialist guard had already made their discomfort and their position absolutely against approving this law because it would be equivalent to recognizing that Spanish laws are not fair.
