It was an exemplary performance. With this sentence and surprising ease, José Antonio Nieto, who was Spanish secretary of security during the time under question in the Supreme Court, answered a question under oath about the Spanish police's intervention in the Catalan referendum on 1st October 2017. The question came from public prosecutors and many of us gave a start when we heard the response from a gentleman who occupied a post of such responsibility under the PP government. If that wasn't enough, here's another of his pearls: "Technically, there weren't police charges". No, clearly. More than a thousand people injured to different extents, images of exceptional violence against peaceful people who were in front of the polling stations... and there wasn't a single police charge.
Really, this is the trial of surprises. Whilst last week was an endless series of the most senior figures from the Spanish government (from former PM Mariano Rajoy to his deputy Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, through the ineffable former treasury minister Cristóbal Montoro and the incomparable Juan Ignacio Zoido) invariably repeating that they didn't know, that they weren't aware, that that wasn't their responsibility and the like, this Monday we went straight to the invention phase. Nieto arrived much better prepared, with precise answers, especially to the questions from prosecutors, the state's lawyer and even Vox. He detailed an endless steam of inaccuracies, to such an extent that it was hard to recognise in his account the serious events that took place in many places around Catalonia on that day and which, very quickly, travelled around the world. Images which are today still hurting Spain's image in the international community, and will do for a long time. Something else was when he was questioned by the defence lawyers and Nieto made important contradictions. Minister Quim Forn wasn't exaggerating when he said that the former secretary of security's narrative was full of untruths.
It's attention-striking that the court's head judge, Manuel Marchena, doesn't allow images and videos of the incidents to be shown alongside the witnesses' testimony. They will be shown at another point in the trial but many of the testimonies would lose strength if compared with the images. To put it plainly: they would refute the claims of witnesses like Nieto over the police charges, violence and "exemplary behaviour". The fact that an instant reply could be given would also make the witnesses be much more prudent. But Marchena, who showed his teeth various times this Monday, has set the rule. And that's how it will be, whether or not it's right because that, in a court, is of the least importance. He already made it clear to one of the lawyers who stood up for him at one point during the day: "I don't need your approval". And that's how it is.