Grotesque, false and fictionalised though it is, we now know the approach that the prosecution will use to justify the accusation of rebellion against the nine pro-independence political prisoners. And also its objective: to avoid reducing the outrageously long sentences demanded by the judge during the case's earlier investigation phase. In fact, it is all summed up by the following sentence from public prosecutor Fidel Cadena, directly quoted from his address to the Supreme Court on Wednesday and, convoluted though it may be, it is worth conveying it as it was said, and bearing the words closely in mind. "The power of the Catalan Mossos d'Esquadra police, which put itself completely on the side of the rebellion, plus the use of human walls which threw themselves against the state security forces (which, in accordance with the judicial orders, were trying to prevent the referendum), obviously committed the violence and intimidation referred to in article 472 of the Spanish Criminal Code".
It's just one sentence, but it introduces three elements that, even though they didn't happen, will be the central axis of the prosecution narrative in the trial: the behaviour of the Mossos; the attitude of the voters on referendum day and in the hours before the 1st October vote; and finally, the transfer of responsibility for the disproportionate violence that the police inflicted at polling stations to the people gathered there who wanted to exercise their right to vote. To sustain an accusation of rebellion and/or sedition, the public prosecutors need to prove that there was violence. They can't find it in the peaceful attitude of the voters at the polling stations as the images of the police baton-charges that day were clear enough and the medical services had to attend to more than a thousand people (1,066, to be exact). The name of every person given medical attention and the description of the injuries suffered has been documented.
So where is the violence that sustains the charge of rebellion? Well, abracadabra... here it is! The prosecutor Fidel Cadena, transformed into David Copperfield, performs a magic trick. The voters were not members of the public who wanted to vote. No!... They were human walls that threw themselves against the members of the state's security forces. How is it that no-one realized this? The more than two million people who went to the ballot boxes on October 1st were not typical voters. Each of them was actually a tiny part of a human wall. That is, the voters created a human wall that crashed down on the Spanish police. There are no images at any polling station supporting this assertion by the prosecutor, but in this trial that's the least important aspect. And wasn't there also a tumultuous uprising outside the Catalan ministry of economy? Where people were singing songs, among them the hymn Virolai, and which was above all a day of protest... So far, so accurate. But what was added, falsely, was the part about the tumultuous uprising itself, just as with the human walls!
And when you get this right at the beginning, all the rest makes sense. The violence came from the voters and the Mossos took the side of the rebellion. This just started two days ago and has only just finished its preliminary questions. Taking it all very gently is going to be important if it carries on like this.