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Interview
10 February 2019 2.00 h

Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas

Lawyer

JAUME ALONSO- CUEVILLAS

”At the beginning there was still the conviction that ’They wouldn’t dare’. But then they did dare”
”From the beginning we were clear that it was a political case and the repression would be brutal”
Strasbourg could be a moral victory with very important political weight But the emancipation of Catalonia will not depend on Strasbourg

Jaume Alonso-Cuevil­las is now a well-known face be­yond the legal and aca­d­e­mic fields. For over a year now, he has en­tered the homes of many Cata­lans and in­structed us, through the media and talks around the coun­try, on how Eu­ro­pean ar­rest war­rants work, the crim­i­nal process and com­plex legal con­cepts. Friendly, ironic and di­dac­tic, he has been key, to­gether with his col­league Gon­zalo Boye, in un­der­stand­ing what has been hap­pen­ing in Brus­sels and the pos­si­ble fate of pres­i­dent Puigde­mont and ex­iled for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ters Comín, Ser­ret, Puig and Pon­satí.

When did you join the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment’s de­fence team?
It was on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2017, after the ple­nary ses­sions on sep­a­ra­tion from Spain. I wasn’t a mem­ber of any party and didn’t know Pres­i­dent Puigde­mont ei­ther, I’d only met him briefly once. Then Cesc Es­teve called me, who was Di­rec­tor of the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment’s legal of­fice and had been a stu­dent of mine. He asked me if I wanted to de­fend the gov­ern­ment. I was shocked at first. He told me to think about it and that the next day he would call again need­ing an an­swer. Ob­vi­ously, I dis­cussed it with my fam­ily and col­leagues and the next day I said yes, I would take it on. I was sum­moned to the pres­i­dent’s of­fices on Sep­tem­ber 11 and met the pres­i­dent and all the min­is­ters. I told them that we needed more lawyers, that I couldn’t do it alone. That was the first con­tact. A big re­spon­si­bil­ity, but fi­nan­cially a bit ru­inous [laughs].
Did you re­alise the case was so se­ri­ous?
No, at that time I didn’t think of every­thing that would come out of it. I now have the per­cep­tion that it will have a great im­pact. The first com­plaint, pre­sented be­fore the TSJC (the Cata­lan High Court), al­ready in­cluded the ac­cu­sa­tion of mis­use of pub­lic funds, which means prison sen­tences. It was al­ready a step fur­ther than 9-N, but it was still re­gional in scope. We were at home, in the high court, which you can get to on your mo­tor­bike. Now it’s an­other thing al­to­gether, we’re in the Cham­pi­ons League.
When did you get the feel­ing things might get com­pli­cated?
Ob­vi­ously when the Jordis were im­pris­oned, al­though there had al­ready been a prior warn­ing, when Méndez de Vigo came out after the demon­stra­tions on Sep­tem­ber 20 and used the word “riot”. To us lawyers this started the alarm bells ring­ing and we knew that meant sedi­tion. And then came the first ac­cu­sa­tion of sedi­tion. At the be­gin­ning there was still the con­vic­tion that “They wouldn’t dare”. But then they did dare, and the Jordis were im­pris­oned, and then they went fur­ther and the fol­low­ing com­plaint was now for re­bel­lion, im­pris­on­ing the gov­ern­ment ... and all the rest.
You and Gon­zalo Boye be­came the link be­tween exile and coun­try. Did you al­ready know him?
I met him on No­vem­ber 2. I was de­fend­ing the PDe­CAT clients – it had al­ready been de­cided that Van den Eynde would de­fend those in the ERC – and Boye took on the de­fence of Comín and Ser­ret and they kicked him out be­cause they told him that he didn’t rep­re­sent any­thing. After a few days, all the lawyers and ex­iles had a meet­ing in Brus­sels – he had con­tacted the lawyer Christophe Marc­hand and his team and we had con­tacted Paul Bekaert. It was an ar­du­ous meet­ing, be­cause we were switch­ing be­tween French and Eng­lish. And Boye has al­ways got these e-cig­a­rettes and it’s quite a show, be­cause he’s al­ways fill­ing it, chang­ing it... and be­cause what we told the Bel­gian lawyers was so un­likely and Boye was smok­ing that... I think that at that first meet­ing they thought we were all on pot or some­thing. Since then, we’ve had a lot of con­tact. In some way, he’s taken on the de­fence abroad and I’ve had a co­or­di­na­tion role be­tween the for­eign and home de­fence. Eu­ro­pean lawyers bore the weight of the Eu­ro­pean ar­rest war­rants, Bel­gians, then Ger­mans and Scots.
On that No­vem­ber 2, was the gov­ern­ment aware that they would go to prison?
I made that first trip with min­is­ters Tu­rull and Forn and their wives in my car. And they took suit­cases with them. We got con­tra­dic­tory in­for­ma­tion, be­cause there was one sec­tor of the Span­ish gov­ern­ment that was in favour of not mak­ing mar­tyrs of them and grant­ing them bail, with­draw­ing their pass­ports, etc. And an­other, the Aran­zadi sec­tor, which took a harder line. And you al­ways have that feel­ing of hope and think they won’t be so bru­tal.
You said the Span­ish gov­ern­ment... were they di­rect­ing them?
Yes, I said the gov­ern­ment. They were guid­ing the pros­e­cu­tor’s of­fice. The com­plaint was al­ready filed, but in the end it de­pended a lot on what the pros­e­cu­tor de­manded, and we knew that we had a judge, Car­men Lamela, who is known for blindly fol­low­ing what the pros­e­cu­tion de­mands. There­fore, the issue was whether the pros­e­cu­tion would de­mand prison or not. And they did, ex­cept for Santi Vila, for whom they re­quested bail.
Did you an­tic­i­pate the prospect of such a long tem­po­rary im­pris­on­ment pend­ing trial or were you still con­vinced they wouldn’t dare?
I feared it when they pre­sented the law­suit for sedi­tion, the Jordis were im­pris­oned and then with the re­bel­lion com­plaint, which was pre­sented with that doc­u­ment by the pros­e­cu­tor en­ti­tled “The fall will be harder still” and the sounds com­ing out of the chief pros­e­cu­tor’s press con­fer­ence with “One, two, three, to prison!” and the cli­mate that we ex­pe­ri­enced in the Na­tional Court on No­vem­ber 2, every­thing pointed to it being a very se­vere pun­ish­ment. Then new lawyers came in and there was some hope when the case was passed to the Supreme Court. They thought that if they swore al­le­giance to the flag there was a pos­si­bil­ity... But no, the Supreme was much worse. From the be­gin­ning we were clear that it was a po­lit­i­cal case and the re­pres­sion would be bru­tal. In fact, they have been im­pris­oned for a very long time, but that’s not the worst of it, the most se­ri­ous thing is the num­ber of years in prison they’re de­mand­ing.
Is there no hope they will be found not guilty?
As a lawyer, I would have to say yes, but as a cit­i­zen who sees re­al­ity I have lit­tle hope. Be­cause when you see the cli­mate in Madrid... The law­suit is sur­real, in its in­ter­pre­ta­tion of both facts and the law. And at first you might think it’s only the pros­e­cu­tor’s of­fice, but then a judge buys the story com­pletely and trans­lates it into a law­suit. And then the ap­peals court con­firms it all with so much sever­ity. The dis­course from the pros­e­cu­tor’s of­fice and every­where else is very se­vere.
Re­bel­lion and sedi­tion, or are there other op­tions? A con­spir­acy for re­bel­lion, for ex­am­ple, to jus­tify less se­ri­ous sen­tences?
We would con­tinue to be in the ter­rain of in­jus­tice. There are no crim­i­nal bases for any of these crimes, and... nei­ther is there vi­o­lence or up­ris­ing. His­tor­i­cally there was the crime of im­proper sedi­tion, when there was no up­ris­ing, but it was de­crim­i­nalised many years ago. There was also the crime of call­ing an il­le­gal ref­er­en­dum but that was also de­crim­i­nalised. At best we could de­bate whether there was dis­obe­di­ence or not. Until 9-N it was un­der­stood that dis­obe­di­ence to­wards the Con­sti­tu­tional Court had no crim­i­nal bases, and every­one had dis­obeyed it! Start­ing with the Supreme Court, the pros­e­cu­tor’s of­fice, the Span­ish gov­ern­ment... Every­one.
What will the trial be like?
They will try to be im­pec­ca­ble with the man­ner in which it is done, be­cause they’re aware they will be ob­served. It will try to demon­strate to the whole of Spain that Span­ish jus­tice – the rule of law – acts, that pun­ish­ment is handed down to dis­si­dents, those who in­cite a coup.... How­ever, this ex­act­ness will de­te­ri­o­rate as the trial pro­gresses, be­cause they will be in a hurry to fin­ish be­fore the mu­nic­i­pal and Eu­ro­pean elec­tion cam­paigns begin. And I sense that the pros­e­cu­tor’s of­fice has asked for a lot of tes­ti­mo­ni­als and ev­i­dence so that af­ter­wards the court will seem fair in dis­miss­ing ev­i­dence from both the pros­e­cu­tion and de­fence. A lot of it will be dis­missed.
Is this why the case has been split be­tween the Supreme Court and the TSJC?
That too. And be­cause given in­ter­na­tional opin­ion and the in­ter­na­tional ob­servers, it wasn’t easy for the court to be judg­ing peo­ple who have only been part of a par­lia­men­tary board and al­lowed a vote. A prob­lem they will also have with the house speaker For­cadell; in fact, they are ac­cus­ing her be­cause she was pres­i­dent of the ANC, and then they name her “leader of the coup”
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Nu­mer­ous ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties have been crit­i­cised in the case. And we now have the con­tro­ver­sial ap­point­ment of Judge Llarena. Did they choose him?
We have just fin­ished the re­port and I will pass it to the de­fence teams first to de­cide what to do or whether to save it for the pre-trial ques­tion­ing. The prob­lem is the lack of trans­parency in the sys­tem of case dis­tri­b­u­tion. The rules that gov­ern the high court are not pub­lished and there has been some con­fu­sion. In the case of the Supreme Court, the rule is clear and it’s pub­lished, but there’s also no por­tal where we can trans­par­ently check whether it is ap­plied cor­rectly and you have to take it case by case. How­ever, it turns out that there is no list of cases any­where, so you have to go to the CGPJ doc­u­men­ta­tion cen­tre and take it sen­tence by sen­tence and build the puz­zle of all the cases to see who the pre­sid­ing judge was, and we’ve done that. We’ve com­piled a re­port of over a hun­dred pages. And the con­clu­sion is that the pre-es­tab­lished order was not fol­lowed in this case.
We’ve been told it will all end up in Stras­bourg, in the Court of Human Rights. What use will that be, after wait­ing years, apart from a moral vic­tory?
Stras­bourg could be a moral vic­tory with very im­por­tant po­lit­i­cal weight, it could mean free­dom for the pris­on­ers if they are not free at that time, a very im­por­tant moral con­dem­na­tion of the State and a so­lu­tion for the pris­on­ers. But the eman­ci­pa­tion of Cat­alo­nia will not de­pend on or ar­rive thanks to Stras­bourg, it will ar­rive via the po­lit­i­cal, Eu­ro­pean path, if we are able to cre­ate the con­di­tions for Eu­rope to force the Span­ish State to ac­cept a ref­er­en­dum or to ac­cept the eman­ci­pa­tion of Cat­alo­nia.
Via which path?
The Cata­lan po­lit­i­cal process is ir­re­versible, 2,300,000 peo­ple have voted for the pro-in­de­pen­dence op­tion and that num­ber’s on the in­crease, be­cause more and more peo­ple are scan­dalised by the de­mo­pho­bia and the lack of rights and free­doms. There are polls that place in­de­pen­dence sup­port­ers at be­tween 55% and 60%, but be­cause they won’t let us count we just don’t know. All this is ac­com­pa­nied by a great in­sti­tu­tional cri­sis of the Span­ish State, be­gin­ning with the monar­chy, fol­lowed by ju­di­cial power, the army, the po­lice, the se­cret ser­vices... And every­thing will be al­tered by a great eco­nomic cri­sis, when they soon begin to raise in­ter­est rates and the State is un­able to pay not only debt but also the in­ter­ests on the debt. There’s a se­ri­ous short-term eco­nomic sce­nario in Spain, and this will en­tail a se­ri­ous eco­nomic in­ter­ven­tion. Eu­rope will set con­di­tions. Re­mem­ber that in Italy they changed the prime min­is­ter. When the troika takes ac­tion, it’s hard.
Going back to Stras­bourg, the court will say whether rights have been vi­o­lated, but can it pro­nounce on the right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion and en­dorse it?
It’s un­likely to do so ex­plic­itly, but maybe it can be done in­di­rectly, through what we tech­ni­cally call an obiter dicta, as an ad­di­tion, an in­sert in some rea­son­ing, but I don’t think it will put it­self in this sit­u­a­tion. Stras­bourg will pro­nounce on what it is asked to, and will con­sider as­pects of the vi­o­la­tion of legal pro­ce­dures, as well as the vi­o­la­tion of po­lit­i­cal rights, the fla­grant vi­o­la­tion of the non-in­vesti­ture of Puigde­mont, Sánchez and Tu­rull.
Stras­bourg will not de­cide whether it was re­bel­lion or not, then?
No, but they may add some things. What is clear is that the court that has ruled on the issue of re­bel­lion is Schleswig-Hol­stein.
How far will this Ger­man rul­ing af­fect the judg­ment of the Span­ish Supreme Court?
Within the Span­ish jus­tice sys­tem, it’s like that joke where there’s a crazy guy dri­ving the wrong way on the mo­tor­way and he thinks that it’s all the oth­ers that are crazy. Spain lives in a sit­u­a­tion of ju­di­cial autarchy... But the Schleswig-Hol­stein rul­ing will have im­por­tant weight for Stras­bourg, due to what they said and the force of it.
And how will the 1-O sen­tence af­fect pres­i­dent Puigde­mont and the rest of the ex­iles?
It won’t af­fect them. Within the Span­ish legal sys­tem they are in a state of pro­ce­dural re­bel­lion and there­fore they have not been tried and will con­tinue in this sit­u­a­tion until they can be de­tained and judged. But when there is a sen­tence they will issue new Eu­ro­pean ar­rest war­rants, and when they do, one fac­tor that will be very im­por­tant will be the sen­tence dic­tated by Schleswig-Hol­stein.
Through­out the Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence process, what role did the Con­sti­tu­tional Court play?
It has played the role of a po­lit­i­cal in­stru­ment in the ser­vice of con­sti­tuted power. It has no cred­i­bil­ity. The spec­ta­cle on a Fri­day af­ter­noon when the judges left for La Sierra or wher­ever they go and the vice pres­i­dent called them back, meet­ing ur­gently and pass­ing a res­o­lu­tion at 10 o’clock at night when no­body asked them to... it has no cred­i­bil­ity. The con­flict comes from the Con­sti­tu­tional Court, which is also the one that curbed the Cata­lan Statute – and from the point of view of com­par­a­tive con­sti­tu­tional law it is un­prece­dented that a po­lit­i­cal court curb a law that has been voted for by ref­er­en­dum – and the one that de­clared that pow­ers for hold­ing a ref­er­en­dum can­not be trans­ferred, when the Con­sti­tu­tion in fact al­lows it... The prob­lem is not the Con­sti­tu­tion, it is the guardians of the Con­sti­tu­tion. The Con­sti­tu­tional Court has been a tool for pre­vent­ing self-de­ter­mi­na­tion in Cat­alo­nia.
It’s hard to un­der­stand that such ir­reg­u­lar­ity can go un­pun­ished.
If we lawyers don’t un­der­stand it, how can cit­i­zens? The “state sew­ers” have al­ways ex­isted, in all states and at all times. And in the Span­ish case, the use of power to re­press dis­sent has al­ways ex­isted. The process has helped us show this State for what it is, and led us to re-in­ter­pret things that hap­pened in the Basque Coun­try, for ex­am­ple... What is hap­pen­ing now has af­fected the le­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment of Cat­alo­nia, and this has hap­pened in an era when there are more means to com­mu­ni­cate it.

in­ter­view

in­ter­view

The hardest moment The president’s lawyer

What has been the hardest moment for you?

When they imprisoned the government. Everything that happened from November 1 to 3. When we received the summons, the trip to Madrid, the appearance in the National Court, that endless wait, the prison order... When I saw them the next day, that was probably the hardest moment ... That image when they were still in suits, unshaven, no tie, no laces in their shoes, no belt... I also saw Puigdemont in prison, but maybe I was already immune to it because I had seen the rest of the government in prison.

Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas (Barcelona, 1961), the son and brother of lawyers – his father put an end to the family tradition of doctors – has what is known as an extensive professional career in the legal world and at university as a Full Professor of Procedural law. When I enter his office for the interview, he is answering a call in relation to a mark he has given one of his students – a 7. And before we finish the conversation he has the producers of Mediapro waiting for him to do a new documentary. He practices as a lawyer, teaches at university, was the youngest dean of the Bar Association of Barcelona, president of the European Federation of Bar Associations, began to study economics at the age of 50, obtaining top marks in all his subjects – when he defended the Barça board of Joan Laporta against the lawsuit presented by then president Rosell, so now we are aware of his vast communicative skills. He is friendly and ironic and has become well-known via the media – in which he has translated the legal concepts behind the Catalan independence process – and now his name is being put forward for the European elections. For over a year now, however, his main job has been as lawyer to president Puigdemont. As a result his Twitter account has multiplied and reached over a hundred thousand followers.

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