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Interview
5 May 2019 2.00 h

Gonzalo Boye

Lawyer for Carles Puidemont and his exiled ministers

Gonzalo BOYE

Lawyer for Carles Puigdemont and his exiled ministers, Gonzalo Boye has recently published the book, Y ahí lo dejo, which chronicles the 2017 independence bid and the exile and trial of its political leaders

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“Spain’s higher courts are dragging down the credibility of the justice system” “This is a political problem that required a political response”
You were on a flight on Oc­to­ber 28, 2017, when you got a call from Jaume Asens. This is where your con­nec­tion with the in­de­pen­dence process began. What are your thoughts now?
I had no firm opin­ion about the peo­ple in­volved, be­cause I didn’t know them, but I had thoughts about the process, be­cause I’d seen things that, from a lawyer’s point of view, had not been done well. An­other thing is whether an of­fence had been com­mit­ted, which is not the case. It was ob­vi­ous to me that at some point there would be a head-on col­li­sion, and there was. Things could have been done dif­fer­ently, I don’t think any­one doubts that. The big prob­lem is that the im­po­si­tion of di­rect rule and the in­dict­ments have noth­ing to do with how things were done, but with what the State wanted to do.
Things are seen very dif­fer­ently in Madrid and in Cat­alo­nia. Do you think that here there was lit­tle un­der­stand­ing of how far the State might go?
There was some in­gen­u­ous­ness, in­gen­u­ous­ness about what con­fronta­tion with the State would mean and about the re­sponse from part of the State, not the whole State. How­ever, we lawyers don’t have a dif­fer­ent view from that of any other cit­i­zen. In other words, in law, noth­ing that has hap­pened should have hap­pened. This is a lawyer’s re­sponse. At the same time, see­ing how the Span­ish State has re­acted to dif­fer­ent chal­lenges through­out his­tory, it’s clear that it has al­ways acted quite sim­i­larly.
In Cat­alo­nia, be­yond the trial and the po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers, is there a risk peo­ple will lose faith in the jus­tice sys­tem?
Spain’s higher courts are drag­ging down the cred­i­bil­ity of the jus­tice sys­tem. De­stroy­ing cred­i­bil­ity has been quick, re­build­ing it will be very dif­fi­cult, and may re­quire a rad­i­cal change in the struc­ture of ju­di­cial power.
You seem sure that Car­les Puigde­mont will get im­mu­nity if elected as an MEP.
Im­mu­nity is granted the mo­ment the elec­toral re­sults are an­nounced. Whether that im­mu­nity is re­spected or not is an­other mat­ter, but that’s a de­ci­sion for the Supreme Court, to choose on which side of the law it stands. They don’t have im­mu­nity, nor im­punity, and we’re show­ing that with the law­suit in Bel­gium against judge Pablo Llarena. The fact is that he’ll have im­mu­nity if elected as an MEP. Yet, there are still weeks to go, and it re­mains to be seen whether vot­ers sup­port him. I’ve done my part, now it’s down to the vot­ers.
If he is elected, the Span­ish ju­di­ciary can ap­peal to the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment. But with the rul­ing by the Schleswig-Hol­stein court, could they only do so on the grounds of mis­use of pub­lic funds?
They can ap­peal on what­ever grounds they want to in­dict him for.
Even tak­ing into ac­count the court’s rul­ing in Ger­many…?
The Supreme Court is not tak­ing any of that into ac­count. It’s try­ing a group of politi­cians for events that Ger­many says were not crim­i­nal, at least in de­mo­c­ra­tic states.
So you don’t rule out an ap­peal on the grounds of re­bel­lion?
Or maybe child mo­lesta­tion or armed rob­bery! The Supreme Court doesn’t care.
Would this ap­peal also de­pend on the make-up of the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment?
The issue is that some take for granted that the ap­peal will go ahead and that it’ll be ad­mit­ted. That they will ap­peal, I’ve no doubt, yet think­ing that it will be ac­cepted is to as­sume too much. When, for ex­am­ple, we have a for­eign min­is­ter who kicked up such a fuss in an in­ter­view. That in­ter­view and his at­ti­tude were more re­veal­ing than any­thing Mr Bor­rell has said since be­com­ing min­is­ter. If I were Pedro Sánchez, I’d have sacked him.
Is the case of Puigde­mont’s im­mu­nity anal­o­gous to that of the de­fen­dants stand­ing in the gen­eral elec­tion?
It’s dif­fer­ent, be­cause im­mu­nity pre­vents ar­rest, and they’ve al­ready been de­tained. Yet, out of good de­mo­c­ra­tic prin­ci­ples they should all be treated equally and be al­lowed to cam­paign, take their seats and then make the nec­es­sary ap­peals. But, it seems the Supreme Court isn’t in­ter­ested in that.
So what you’re say­ing is that even if peo­ple vote for them, it won’t count?
It al­ready hap­pened in the elec­tion on De­cem­ber 21, 2017, but, clearly what they can’t do is rewrite the law. There have also been cases of oth­ers who have taken their seats while in prison. In those cases, the Supreme Court takes on a role that a ju­di­cial body should never have.
You also rep­re­sent pres­i­dent Torra.
I have that ho­n­our. It’s a law­suit that does not stand up. It doesn’t have the nec­es­sary el­e­ments to be crim­i­nal, be­cause there would have to be dis­obe­di­ence to a higher power, and the elec­toral board (JEC) is not above pres­i­dent Torra. At the same time, there would have to be an ex­am­ple of dis­obe­di­ence and there isn’t. Pres­i­dent Torra has made a se­ries of al­le­ga­tions to the JEC and the JEC has been mod­i­fy­ing the ob­ject of de­bate and ended up im­pos­ing cer­tain cri­te­ria, and we be­lieve these cri­te­ria go against the law. They are il­le­gal and so ar­bi­trary, and that amounts to per­ver­sion of jus­tice by the JEC. That’s why we’ve launched a law­suit against the mem­bers of the JEC.
How im­por­tant is it that two mem­bers of the JEC are also part of the Supreme Court try­ing the lead­ers?
It’s an­other ir­reg­u­lar­ity among many we’ve seen in the trial. It’s hard to ex­plain how in the morn­ing they can be judges try­ing a case against politi­cians and in the af­ter­noon be the peo­ple mak­ing res­o­lu­tions on the neu­tral­ity of an elec­toral sys­tem in which the de­fen­dants are tak­ing part.
What stage is the law­suit against judge Llarena at now?
We are at the stage of pre­sent­ing the al­le­ga­tions. We put ours for­ward on March 13, and now it lies with Llarena’s lawyer and the Span­ish State. This is a pro­ce­dure with three rounds of al­le­ga­tions, and it comes to an end on De­cem­ber 19, if I re­mem­ber cor­rectly. That means that in Jan­u­ary there will be a hear­ing at which the court is obliged to pre­sent a pre­lim­i­nary ques­tion we have pro­posed to Lux­em­bourg. After Lux­em­bourg rules on that, then there will be sen­tenc­ing.
If the courts rule that the de­fen­dants’ pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence was in­fringed by Llarena’s state­ments while the in­ves­ti­gat­ing judge, will the case against them col­lapse?
It will strengthen the con­victed de­fen­dants’ ap­peal to the Eu­ro­pean Court of Human Rights, be­cause there will be a court that will have said: “This hap­pened.” That will be a legal fact we can work with in Stras­bourg.
In the book you say that 2018 was about mount­ing a de­fence and that 2019 would be about mount­ing an at­tack. What does that mean?
There are civil law­suits and other ini­tia­tives that will be­come pub­lic in the next few weeks. We have de­fended our po­si­tion, we have con­sol­i­dated it and we’re ready for the is­su­ing of a third ar­rest war­rant. What has to hap­pen now is to go on the at­tack in a pro­ce­dure that should never have hap­pened. Let me em­pha­sise: this is a po­lit­i­cal prob­lem that re­quired a po­lit­i­cal re­sponse. It has been ju­di­cialised and we have to undo that so the in­de­pen­dence process can re­turn to the po­lit­i­cal arena. And that takes time. But it’s not all about de­fence. A sec­tor of the Span­ish State is com­mit­ting se­ri­ous ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the area of rights and free­doms. We’ll take the bat­tle to all the Eu­ro­pean courts we have to. It will be an at­tack in the legal sphere.
We are also wait­ing for the UN to rule on ap­peals…
Peo­ple should pay at­ten­tion be­cause over the next few weeks a lot will hap­pen in the legal sense. We’ll an­nounce them. Each has its own mo­ment, its own form, its own aim. To­gether they make up a large jig­saw puz­zle that is the legal in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of the con­flict. The po­lit­i­cal in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of the con­flict is down to pres­i­dent Puigde­mont and the other min­is­ters.
The domino ef­fect pro­posed from the first day?
That’s right. The dif­fer­ence be­tween the Span­ish strat­egy and our strat­egy is that the Span­ish one is im­pro­vised and ours is planned out. There’s a sec­tor of the State that’s rot­ten, which be­lieves it has to de­fend the unity of the na­tion at any price, even at the price of pre­vent­ing the de­mo­c­ra­tic progress.
Have the de­fences lined up the pieces well enough in this domino ef­fect?
The domino ef­fect is only about the strat­egy abroad. There is still time to in­tro­duce it into the trial. There are things that have been done well in the trial and oth­ers that haven’t. Col­leagues like An­dreu Van den Eynde and Jordi Pina have done well, such as de­mand­ing time and again that video footage be shown. Also Cuixart’s de­fence. It is im­por­tant to do this be­cause it is not the same to ask for footage to be shown and then be turned down, as to be able to say you asked for it 48, 56 or 90 times, but were al­ways de­nied with such puerile ar­gu­ments as “it’s play­ing to the gallery”.
Judge Marchena says the videos will be shown in time…
That is kick­ing the can down the road. If a wit­ness says some­thing and then I show them an image show­ing the op­po­site, it would be in­ter­est­ing to see how the wit­ness ex­plains the con­tra­dic­tion. They have avoided that. And that threat­ens the right to de­fence and, to my mind, also the right to ju­di­cial im­par­tial­ity.
But the charges against the de­fen­dants will have to be proved.
It doesn’t mat­ter, be­cause the the­ory is they were the in­sti­ga­tors and in­tel­lec­tual heads of the re­bel­lion, which was chan­neled through Cuixart and Sánchez. And that spread to those rebel masses, those human walls, those crowds…
But this link must be proved.
Does any­one think this trial was nec­es­sary? I be­lieve it’s a pro­ce­dure to get to a re­sult. From Er­do­gan’s view the events are very se­ri­ous, but not crim­i­nal from the per­spec­tive of a de­mo­c­ra­tic court, such as Schleswig-Hol­stein. This is the de­bate. Is there any doubt about what hap­pened on Sep­tem­ber 20 or Oc­to­ber 1? Every­one saw what hap­pened. The de­bate is dif­fer­ent. I per­son­ally don’t care if this per­son or that was in­sulted. What in­ter­ests me is what type of crim­i­nal rights we want in a de­mo­c­ra­tic so­ci­ety.
You say the de­fence should not focus on in­di­vid­u­als, but rather on de­fend­ing mil­lions of Cata­lans.
More than a col­lec­tive de­fence it has to be by rep­re­sen­ta­tion. That means those who voted and those who protested are being judged through their rep­re­sen­ta­tives.
In your book, you re­gret not being one of the de­fence lawyers in the Supreme Court, but now you say per­haps it is bet­ter you aren’t. What changed?
I don’t like to go where I’m not wanted. What’s more, I’d have a to­tally dif­fer­ent strat­egy, and that would gen­er­ate pres­sure I’m not sure every­one would be will­ing to put up with. I be­lieve it’s a trial that de­serves more ten­sion; it’s about con­fronta­tion, a clash of two in­ter­pre­ta­tions of democ­racy.
From the start you’ve said the de­fen­dants will be con­victed. What about the ru­mours they will get light sen­tences?
Peo­ple tend to pay more at­ten­tion to ru­mours than fact-based analy­sis. If we, the in­ter­na­tional de­fence, have made no mis­takes it’s be­cause we don’t make de­ci­sions based on sen­ti­ment. We carry out dis­pas­sion­ate, cold and tech­ni­cal analy­sis.
Do you have an ide­o­log­i­cal con­nec­tion with the peo­ple you are de­fend­ing?
I de­fend pub­lic rights and free­doms, and this is the link with the peo­ple I’m de­fend­ing. For us to be in agree­ment in po­lit­i­cal, eco­nomic and philo­soph­i­cal terms seems to me as a lawyer to be an ex­ag­ger­a­tion.
You use lit­i­ga­tion as a strate­gic tool of trans­for­ma­tion. Are you an ide­al­ist?
No, I think we should try to achieve ideals through legal means, and that’s what makes me fight on. I’ve al­ways con­sid­ered ide­al­ists utopian, but the goals I set I con­sider to be achiev­able. Oth­er­wise, I wouldn’t waste my time, be­cause I am a prag­matic per­son. And I’m not the only one, as there are a group of lawyers in Eu­rope who do this type of law.
Does your vo­ca­tion for de­fend­ing human rights come from being con­victed for a crime that you have al­ways said you did not com­mit?
I felt the vo­ca­tion even be­fore be­com­ing a lawyer. I’ve al­ways felt drawn to lost causes. My fa­ther was al­ways against the dic­ta­tor­ship and its re­pres­sion, and that left a mark.
How do you think the Cat­alo­nia-Spain con­flict will de­velop?
I think the prob­lem will go on for a long time. The Span­ish State is not ma­ture enough to tackle all is­sues, such as Cata­lans freely choos­ing what they want to do.
Will it take a long time to get there?
I don’t know. I al­ways give the same ex­am­ple. I was in Ger­many when the Berlin Wall began falling, and I and my wife de­cided to go and see it the next day. But it was too late and it had al­ready fallen. Some­times his­tory seems to go on for­ever and some­times it comes all at once.

in­ter­view

in­ter­view

Chronicle of a process

Boye wrote Y ahí lo dejo to explain his work leading the defence of former government members in exile.

Using law to change the world

Gonzalo Boye (Viña del Mar, Chile, 1965) has lived in Germany, England and Spain. Married with three children, his mother is the daughter of a Catalan. Since October 2017, Boye has led the defence of Catalan officials in exile. He says he has learnt to live with the stigma of being unjustly convicted and sentenced to almost eight years in prison for his alleged participation in a kidnapping by the Basque separatist group ETA. He studied law in prison and is devoted to using it to change the world. One of his most notable legal battles was 10 years ago, when he defended the rights of the Palestinian people. He is doing the same for Catalans.

Waterloo, Russia, Palestine

It has been a year of airports. On October 28, 2017, when returning from Calcutta, and after an enigmatic call from Jaume Asens, Boye was drawn into the independence cause. “If we had been preparing a heist with an armoured van we might have spoken more clearly,” he jokes in the book. On arriving home in Madrid, he sat in the kitchen of his house and wrote out the “domino effect”, the strategy for the legal battle with the Spanish State. Since then he has combined trips to visit his clients in Belgium, Germany and Scotland with acting as a legal advisor for FIFA representing the Palestinian football league, as well as trips to Russia to help with the defence of whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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