Millo: “Supporters of rebellion”

Although the Supreme Court trial over the Catalan independence process had skirted around the issue of violence required for the charges of rebellion for two weeks and even former Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy had preferred to speak of “harassment” and never used the word “violence”, the prosecutors yesterday finally managed to get a witness to utter the word needed to give shape to the crime included in article 472 of the Criminal Code. The witness in question was Enric Millo, the former delegate of the PP government to Catalonia, with the added value for the court of he being someone who actually lives in Catalonia. In an amended version of the violence referred to by Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, he being her in-situ informant at the time, Millo criminalised a sector of the Catalan pro-independence movement by claiming it was “undeniable that there was violence.”

The story told by Millo was one of fear, the fear that he saw in the eyes and heard in the voices of the police officers he spoke with, because he had had no intention of meeting or listening to the civilians injured by police brutality on 1-0. “I heard terrifying testimonies. I could see broken fingers, fractured legs, a torn bulletproof vest, and that can’t be done with a fingernail, it had to be a sharp object. They [the police officers] told me they had fallen into the Fairy’s trap”, he said.

However, Millo’s story curiously never translated into any sick days among the police officers present.

During Millo’s declaration, presiding judge Marchena was forced to warn the public in the gallery to “Avoid murmurings of disapproval and even ironic smiles. This is not a norm of courtesy, it is a legal imperative,” as Catalan government Ministers and MPs reacted to Millo’s testimony.