It should be possible to say it without anyone getting worked up: the whitewash from the lawyers defending the political prisoners against public prosecution service and the state's legal service has been merciless. Rarely have the prosecutions appeared as uncomfortable and nervous as they did this Tuesday during the speeches by Andreu Van den Eynde and, especially, Xavier Melero and Jordi Pina. It lasted almost seven hours, each lawyer with their own style, taking apart the enormous lie that has been fabricated against the independence movement with the nonexistent violence and uprising that justifies the charges of rebellion and sedition. Never like today had the state's manipulation seemed as clear and made you feel as embarrassed for them. Never like today had the fallacy of an inconsistent narrative been displayed on such scale; a prosecution incapable of presenting evidence for such serious charges during the trial was bled dry.
When Xavier Melero takes up his pen it's almost like when Messi takes the ball. The conclusion is already known more times than not. The remarks from Melero, Quim Forn's lawyer, were hard-hitting, at times unsparing, realistic and bitter, for independence supporters too. Like when he said that no unilateral declaration of independence had taken place and that when article 155 was approved, what the Catalan government did was to hand over power, not defend it. His diatribe against Diego Pérez de los Cobos, the police coordinator during the referendum, was ferocious and put an interesting thesis onto the table: his work was never that of a coordinator.
For his part, Jordi Pina was informal and implacable during the three hours available to him as the lawyer for Jordi Sànchez, Jordi Turull and Josep Rull. He took many of the prosecutors arguments to the absurd. Are the prosecutors as incompetent as Pina showed? His commitment to the political prisoners, far from appearing to be a disadvantage, made his speech even greater. And it gave a moment of great emotion when he said it had been an honour to defend them and when he defined them as "gent de pau" (people of peace).
The session was opened by Andreu Van den Eynde, lawyer for Oriol Junqueras and Raül Romeva. Speaking first cannot be easy but he did so with a professional air and marking a difference between the right to protest and rebellion: it was at times a political defence, at times technical. His request that the resolution of the conflict return to politics will sadly be ignored.
After spending a good part of the day in the Supreme Court, you'd expect the verdict to be infinitely lighter than what the prosecutions are asking for. Disobedience and little more. But in the passages of the former convent of the Salesas Reales and in the recesses, what you hear the most is to teach them a lesson and, least of all, justice.