MADRID’S SPECIAL TRIBUNALS FOR INTREPID CATALANS

That to­tal­i­tar­ian regimes do not like dis­sent may seem an un­der­state­ment. Take Daniel Or­tega and his ex­tended fam­ily’s bru­tal rule over Nicaraguans. Just re­cently, end­ing 2023, the coun­try’s po­lice ac­cused Karen Cele­bertti, or­gan­iser of the local fran­chise of Miss Uni­verse to non-other than ter­ror­ism. The real rea­son had been the crowds through­out the coun­try cel­e­brat­ing the re­cent coro­na­tion of Sheyn­nis Pala­cios, a com­pa­triot with open sym­pa­thies to the op­po­si­tion. Ms Cele­bertti’s hus­band and son were ar­rested, while she was out­lawed from her coun­try.

Such abuse is ex­pected in places such as Rus­sia, the Arab world, or in China. It is being well re­ported how Bei­jing is sub­du­ing Hong Kong’s de­mo­c­ra­tic stance, in a slow but re­lent­less course, more no­table since the Um­brella move­ment of 2014. Within this con­text, also late in 2023, a media ty­coon, Jimmy Lai, was held in court after three years of de­ten­tion, ac­cused of col­lud­ing with for­eign forces, after ar­ti­cles ap­peared in his pop­u­lar tabloid Apple Daily. Mr Lai, who was al­ready sen­tenced to al­most six years in jail for fraud in 2022 – a ver­dict de­nounced by human-rights groups – may now face a life be­hind bars.

One re­gards the West as being free from law­fare, with no few in­stances by which cit­i­zens have been granted pro­tec­tion: pros­e­cu­tors tar­get­ting real crimes, a ju­di­ciary in­su­lated from po­lit­i­cal pres­sure, a free media eager to de­nounce op­pres­sion, or a par­lia­ment that cares that the de­mo­c­ra­tic game is alive and kick­ing. Re­gret­tably, as re­cently de­nounced in this col­umn by Mr Freix­enet, in one “west­ern” coun­try these levers melt; at least when those fac­ing the law are Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence sup­port­ers (an “Easy to Iden­tify Group”, de­nom­i­na­tion used by the Court of Jus­tice of the EU).

In a re­cent pub­li­ca­tion, Messrs. Ros and Llucià, from “Maspons i An­gle­sells” (an as­so­ci­a­tion that seeks to re­cover Cata­lan civic law, one of the old­est in Eu­rope) has ex­posed the law­fare in the case of Ms Laura Borràs, pres­i­dent of Cat­alo­nia’s Par­lia­ment, and con­victed of mis­man­age­ment of pub­lic funds in March 2023. As with other pro-in­de­pen­dence fig­ures, be­fore the for­mal trial Ms Borràs was pub­licly con­demned by the media and po­lit­i­cal par­ties, both look­ing for fresh blood. In what turned into a de facto pub­lic trial that lasted for months, a nar­ra­tive was built to­wards only one pos­si­ble ver­dict, guilty.

Ex­perts re­ported how Ms Borràs had al­ways acted within pub­lic pro­cure­ment law, that works were awarded ac­cord­ing to the then valid leg­is­la­tion, that no one from the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s side took any il­licit money, and, fi­nally, that the works were real and fol­lowed the ten­der’s re­quire­ments - easy to at­test to as they are pub­lic web­sites. This notwith­stand­ing, Ms Borràs was sen­tenced to 4.5 years of prison, and 13 years’ dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion from pub­lic of­fice - cu­ri­ously (or not) the same sen­tence as the or­gan­is­ers of the Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum of Oc­to­ber 1, 2017. In­trigu­ingly, the same tri­bunal (the Cat­alo­nia’s Tri­bunal of Jus­tice), con­sid­er­ing the sen­tence in­flated, pro­posed a par­tial par­don to shorten it to below two years to avoid prison. But the goal of the case was met: that of bar­ring her from pub­lic of­fice.

Mr Damià del Clot has ded­i­cated a book to the mat­ter: “The strat­egy of re­pres­sion against the Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence move­ment”, in which he writes that “Franco al­ready used the law to an­ni­hi­late po­lit­i­cal dis­si­dence... Today law­fare is a strat­egy that re­quires the com­plic­ity of the ad­min­is­tra­tion, the media, as well as the ju­di­ciary and, above all, the so-called deep state. This is only pos­si­ble by using the penal code from a friend-enemy per­spec­tive”.