Thread by @Graeme_SoW

With the trial of pro-independence Catalan politicians underway, a serious thread on why I think much of the prosecution case against them is bullshit, to use the appropriate technical term.

Given that the accused are facing sentences of up to 25 years based on this accusation, this is not a debate about trivial issues. Now it’s difficult to claim that an accusation is unfounded without doing some research, so I’ve read the prosecution case.

This thread focuses above all on the issue of violence which is key to the accusation sustaining rebellion charges and demanding such high prison sentences for the accused. A key issue because demonstrating the violent uprising happened is needed to sustain rebellion charges

The uprising is not an optional extra in the law regarding rebellion, it is there in the first line. So to bring these charges Spanish prosecutors have had to create a version of events which I find simply unrecognisable.

Firstly the obligatory disclaimer. In the shouty atmosphere of current Spanish political debate anyone who doesn’t support harsh punishment for the politicians charged risks being accused of being a pro-independence activist. I’m happy to clarify that this is not my situation.

Now let’s go back to September/October of 2017. It’s not that long ago, the run up to the referendum on independence for Catalonia that was held on October 1st 2017, and which the Spanish government worked so hard to prevent.

The government’s intervention on referendum day was way over the top and immensely damaging for the image of the country. Above all the decision to send in the riot police to try and forcibly prevent the vote in selected polling stations rightly shocked people around the world.

The police violence occurred, no amount of shouting about fake news, hispanophobia or Russian bots changes that - there is plenty of genuine footage available for all who want to see it, and no shortage of observers from Spain and overseas who reported on what happened that day.

Apart from anything else, the police intervention that day was completely ineffective - the referendum still went ahead. In retrospect it looks like an angry, petulant reaction to the frustration the national government felt at not being able to stop the vote from taking place.

Now the sensible thing for the Spanish government to do would have been to recognise that the decision to send in the riot cops was an enormously damaging fiasco, and then do something to repair the damage. But no, instead we got a propaganda counter offensive based around denial

So far so bad, but problems really start with an accusation that attempts to convert that propaganda operation into a vengeful judicial ‘truth’. So what, you might say - the defence present their version and the prosecution present theirs. That’s not how it is supposed to work.

Defendants are entitled to lie to save their skin, prosecutors are supposed to provide hard evidence which proves the charges they present. Instead we get a manipulated version of events which can only hope to succeed by demonstrating a violent uprising that never really happened

The referendum campaign in 2017, whatever else you might think about the issue, was based around peaceful mobilisation. To make their case the Spanish prosecutors have to present a highly selective account of events.

There are three legs, all very shaky, to the violent uprising that has been concocted for the trial. One is the referendum day itself (yes, really), another is a demonstration against a police search in September 2017, and the third involves heavy use of imagination.

Let’s start with the September protest, as this event - subjected to a large dose of exaggeration - is exhibit A for the violence charges. On September 20th 2017 a Barcelona court ordered a search of the economy department of the Catalan government.

The search was part of a fairly opaque investigation into the referendum process. The pro-independence movement organised a demonstration in protest against the operation, and although there was vandalism of some Guardia Civil vehicles the protest was largely peaceful.

At most it involved some public order offences. Read the accounts written at the time and nothing special happened. In the hands of the prosecutors, however, this day has been transformed into an organized action forming part of a planned roadmap taking Catalonia to independence.

The charges of rebellion against the leaders of civic organisations involved depend crucially on this day, as they were not politicians approving illegal resolutions. The day has been converted into a symbol of how Catalan leaders planned to use force to achieve their objectives.

This is where we come to a small problem. Nobody, except the investigating judge and those he gave orders to, had any way of knowing that this search operation would take place on this day. The demonstration was entirely reactive, it couldn’t form part of anyone’s roadmap.

So leg two of the violence case, even shakier, is the referendum day itself. Pro-independence activists sought to protect voting stations against police attempts to seize ballot boxes. They didn’t use violence, they formed human walls to try and prevent access.

Those who don’t know what happened that day don’t really want to. During the trial we will be treated to a long parade of police witnesses testifying to the awful injuries they suffered throwing people down the stairs, using their batons and dragging people away.

All violence that occurred is attributed by prosecutors to the pro-independence side, regardless of its real source. That violence only occurred on that day in those places where the riot police intervened is just one of those weird coincidences that happen occasionally.

Those who sympathise with this strategy will find themselves defending some thoroughly illiberal positions. To criminalise passive resistance to a police intervention as violent rebellion is something that makes Spain’s infamous gag law (Ley Mordaza) seem like a minor detail.

Even so, it still doesn’t add up to much when you’re asking for 25 years behind bars for the accused. So finally we get the conversion of the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, into a nascent army ready to use their weapons as a coercive force in defence of the new republic.

Never mind that this, obviously, never happened. I am not aware of even a single case where a member of this force used their weapon in defence of the Catalan republic. They've invented a concept of the implicit threat of violence due, above all, to the absence of the real thing.

It’s as if you go into a bank to use the ATM and find yourself charged with robbery because, potentially, you could - in the right circumstances - have gone up to the counter and demanded they hand over all the money.

The irony of this is that the only people who have been on the receiving end of any physical force from the Mossos have been pro-independence activists in recent protests in Barcelona. Even though the Mossos remain under the control of a notionally pro-independence government.

Weak is not a sufficient description to describe the evidence for a violent uprising. The events of September and October 2017 were related by hundreds of foreign journalists in addition to the local reports.

Spain is a country with one of the highest mobile phone ownership rates anywhere and has ample internet provision. Yet here we have the only violent rebellion of the modern age which is completely invisible on the internet outside of judicial documents. Just try and find it.

All of this is propped up on the even shakier foundation of a secret conspiratorial roadmap, when anyone in Spain in the last 10 years who has been awake and paying even minimal attention to the news knew perfectly well what was going on in Catalonia.

So that’s essentially it, events where the reactions to unpredictable circumstances are presented instead as planned conspiracy - and with an armed force that didn’t use its arms or even mobilise to change the situation.

I think all of this adds up to a political accusation, the judicial expression of that miserable attempt to rewrite the pointless mistakes committed on referendum day by pretending that what we saw didn’t really happen that way.

What’s more it is a political accusation being dealt with by one of the most heavily politicised courts in Spain. I recall the outrage here last year when efforts to extradite Catalan politicians who left Spain after the referendum collapsed. Another ill-prepared fiasco.

The outrage was over provincial judges challenging the might and wisdom of the Tribunal Supremo. How dare these minor European judges question our judgement, was the pompous attitude (which also helps to explain the extradition fiasco). Do they not know who we are?

Well the judges on the Tribunal Supremo are not the best in Spain, they simply have the best political connections. You don’t get to the Supremo as the result of a lifetime’s dedication to diligent judicial service, you get there because the PP or the PSOE like you.

All senior judicial appointments go through the politically appointed Consejo General del Poder General, and these appointments have traditionally been controlled by two political parties who currently struggle to reach 50% of the vote between them.

Crusaders against corruption, or those judges who pursue cases against powerful interests are very unlikely to make it to the Supremo, except occasionally as defendants. You can be an excellent judge in Spain and go nowhere.

This system was brutally exposed recently by a leaked Whatsapp message from a senior PP politician claiming that the latest judicial carve up was a victory for the party. Marchena, the judge at the heart of that scandal, presides the tribunal judging the Catalan politicians.

The result is a tribunal which is unsurprisingly very protective of the country’s political class, or that part of it which appoints them. So nobody was even slightly surprised when they rejected well founded academic fraud charges against PP leader Pablo Casado. Marchena again.

There is a double edged sword here. If you fall foul of the Supremo, as with the current trial, you find yourself in a very vulnerable position with very limited rights of appeal within Spain. Baltasar Garzón can testify to this. European appeals can take years.

This is a problem when your highest level court can initiate its own investigations. The Supremo is effectively a law unto itself, and has taken over the Catalan case not because it corresponds naturally to this court - but because it wanted to.

Add to this the procedural abuse of allowing the extreme right party Vox to occupy the role of ‘acusación popular’ and use this notionally public interest position as a propaganda platform.

There are sorry precedents for this happening, the equally extremist Manos Limpias was repeatedly allowed to occupy this role until corruption charges finally put them out of action. Again, the Garzón case comes to mind as an example.

Now there is a view that judicializing the Catalan referendum somehow removes consideration of the issue from the political sphere. I would argue the contrary case, all you end up doing is politicising the judicial process.

The original accusation document from prosecutors kicking off this process wasn’t entitled “Let’s look at the law and see if any offences have been committed here”, it was entitled “Mas dura sera la caida” (harder will be the fall).

No good will come of it, not for Spain or Catalonia. There is a political problem that needs to be solved and dealing with it using the let’s get ‘em spirit of “A por ellos” will only ensure the problem continues to fester.

Some are happy with this, and even happy for things to get worse if they benefit from it. Electoral benefit from not solving the crisis.

So remember folks, the theatre may be very elegant and the production can be hugely expensive, but that doesn’t mean the show you are watching isn’t a farce.