On April 10th, 2018 - more than two years have gone by - the television news on Tele 5, the most watched in Spain, opened its daily programme as follows: "Police strike against the Committees for the Defence of the Republic. The Civil Guard has arrested the alleged coordinator of the violent attacks that caused blockages of different highways in Catalonia over Easter which left thousands of people trapped for hours.The woman is accused of leading these CDR committees and has been indicted for offences of terrorism and rebellion". The next day, Madrid-based newspaper ABC dedicated its pictorial front page to a full-page image of Tamara Carrasco accompanied by Civil Guard officers, and alongside it, the following text in quotation marks, which the newspaper asserted the Catalan woman had said in a recording obtained by means of dubious legality: "If we stop the port of Barcelona it would be brutal". We could list several more media, as many of them swallowed the Civil Guard version, something that, on the other hand, has happened on multiple occasions over the years. As we already know, whoever imposes their narrative first is virtually unbeatable, at a time when the legitimacy of almost any action whatsoever against the Catalan independence movement is assumed.
Since that day, Tamara Carrasco has been made to suffer an ordeal in police stations and courts in Catalonia and Madrid: she was first transferred to the capital of Spain, since the inclusion of terrorism and rebellion offences in the accusation meant that the investigation depended on the central National Audience court. It was not until November that the magistrate Diego de Egea changed the accusation to a crime of public disorder and thus sent the case to the Catalan courts, although he maintained the obligation on Carrasco to stay confined to her municipality, Viladecans, an order which continued until the end of May 2019, when Barcelona's court number 24 lifted that restriction. And finally: the verdict acquitted her of the crime of public disorder this Tuesday. Around 30 months have passed from the nightmare arrest until the end of the judicial journey.
A happy ending, some may think. It isn't true. The wrong that's been done is enormous and irreparable, since until this final outcome, it's been no holds barred, with a ferocity that can only be explained by the general case against Catalan independence and the will to stop any protest as well as the right to demonstrate, seeking to frame it in the crimes of terrorism and rebellion. Apparently, when the Civil Guard burst into Tamara Carrasco's house, she was in possession of a whistle, and as well, a cardboard mask featuring the face of Òmnium Cultural president Jordi Cuixart. With these thin strands, a court case was woven together and for more than a year she was forbidden to leave the town where she lives. Against another member of the CDR, Adrià Carrasco, who left for Belgium when the Civil Guard was about to arrest him at his home in Esplugues for blocking motorways at La Roca del Vallès and Vallcarca, an arrest warrant for terrorism was also initially issued; and a year later the charges would be reduced to public disorder.
Too many cases have ended like this, with a not guilty sentence because the accusations had nowhere to go. We will not talk here about cases that have been tried and given absolutely disproportionate sentences which one day Europe will amend. Late, but it will happen. In the face of all this repressive fury in Spain, which is becoming increasingly well-known internationally, it is of little value to create groups of experts to improve Spain's image abroad, as foreign minister Arancha González Laya announced this Monday. Improving Spain's reputation was already attempted by Josep Borrell with the ill-conceived Global Spain, which has now been redirected for other purposes, but which acted as the government's battering ram abroad for a time. There's a much simpler and cheaper way: end the repression!