Although it was scarcely unexpected, the opposition expressed by the Supreme Court prosecutors to applying the amnesty law passed by the Spanish Congress continues to cause concern and astonishment. Their ingenuity with the misuse of public funds offences, alleging personal enrichment of those pro-independence political prisoners already convicted of this crime - Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Turull, Raül Romeva and Dolors Bassa - as well as the exiled Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Lluís Puig, means, in practice, that the public prosecutors have declared themselves in direct rebellion against compliance with the law. The amnesty law is clear, which is why its approval by the Spanish parliament took time. We have always said that conducting politics from the judiciary is a mistake that encourages those in politics to interfere in justice, amplifying the mutual feedback resulting from the current mess.
The prosecutors say: "It is beyond doubt that the prosecuted Puigdemont, Comín and Puig (in their capacity as president and ministers of the Catalan government) and the already-convicted Junqueras, Turull, Romeva and Bassa, as receivers of the expenses, stole public funds themselves. They did not resort to the passive conduct of committing [a crime] by omission to allow others to steal, but rather they themselves stole public funds, in the form of millions of euros to execute, in violation of the decisions of the Constitiutional Court and the Catalan High Court, an unconstitutional project for the disintegration of Spain and the proclamation of independence; and these funds have not been returned." "The misappropriation of public funds resulted in a patrimonial benefit for the authors, since they allocated them to the elaboration, development and realization of their illegal project, which produced an undoubted patrimonial benefit, since, having decided to hold the illegal referendum at all costs, they knew perfectly well the magnitude of the expenses and the need to obtain them by resorting to a blatant violation of the duty of custody to steal them from the public treasury of all Spaniards" which "implies personal enrichment by being able to dispose of public funds for their illicit purposes".
Not a single one of those accused of misuse of public funds in the pro-independence leaders' trial, nor those in exile, profited financially
This is the Gordian knot of the text from the public prosecutors with which they seek to get around the law, since in Article 1.1 a&b, second paragraph, crimes of misappropriation of public funds are included in the amnesty "as long as there was no purpose of enrichment". That is why it is so important to define the enrichment, even if it is with twisted or malicious arguments, since not a single one of those accused of misuse of public funds in the trial, nor the exiles referred to in this text from the public prosecution service, profited financially or obtained a benefit of any amount. You can always be enormously creative in a piece of writing of this nature and, indeed, many of the pieces produced during these years by judges and prosecutors will go down in history as texts that do not stand the test of time.
If this is what the prosecutors have said, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who knows that it is not enough just to pass the law, in the framework of the turbulent legislature that is approaching, sent a message this Wednesday to the judges that sooner rather than later they will soon have to understand: if by the end of the month there is no agreement on the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary, he will present a reform to remove that body's powers when making appointments to the Supreme Court and the High Courts of the autonomous communities. The conservative Professional Association of the Magistrature (APM), the association with majority support in the judicial profession, has expressed its "profound rejection and concern" at the proposal that Pedro Sánchez has put on the table to reduce the powers of the judges' governing body: they consider it "unacceptable" and a "true constitutional assault". "Unfortunately, just one more in addition to the permanent attacks that the judges of this country receive every day," they say.
Perhaps the game is slipping out of the hands of the Supreme Court judges, without them fully realizing where the executive's movements will come from. And, perhaps, with so much concern about Puigdemont and Junqueras, that ends up being the least of their problems.