Junqueras on the attack

As a historian, Oriol Junqueras, having been silenced for more than a year in prison, was likely aware yesterday that his statement in the plenary session of the Supreme Court, where he is accused of rebellion and sedition, was one for the history books. It will live on in the archives of his party, The Republican Left (ERC). Declining to respond to the prosecutor’s and state legal team’s statements, he concentrated only on the questions put to him by his lawyer, Andreu van den Eynde. Junqueras made it clear that the 1-O trial is political, to him, and he went on the attack, asserting the right to self-determination and decrying the narrative of violence. “I consider myself a political prisoner,” he proclaimed to the court, before sitting down. In the same way that the leader of the ERC warned that will not be the last the world hears of Catalan independence, because “we will continue to try regardless of the results of this process” and because “voting is not a crime”, the former the counsellor of the interior, Joaquim Forn, went on the attack, pointing to his political commitment to make good on the 1-O referendum, whilst having not given any order to the Catalan Police to disobey judicial mandates.

Junqueras emphasised his love of Spain (in Spanish) and argued that all the accused have good intentions: “Before independents, we are republicans, and before democrats, we are simply good people,” said the ex-vice president, accused of a crime that Spain has only ever convicted one person for: Colonel Antonio Tejero, for his armed coup d’état in February of 1981. “We are not enemies of anyone”, Junqueras went said.