The fact that Spain's National Audience should leak time and again at suitable moments of the election campaign shouldn't silence the condemnation and repulsion at behaviour inappropriate for any court, but even less so when it's a question, along with the Supreme Court, of the two highest levels of the Spanish judiciary. This time, it's been documents from the so-called operation Judas, which has accused nine members of the Catalan Committees for Defence of the Republic, seven of whom are in prison, of terrorism.
Without drawing any definitive conclusions, since the case is a separate part of proceedings which are still secret, four comments. First, the broader case which is talked about has all the appearance of not being very different from the general case run by Barcelona's court 13 which acted like a grab bag when it came to having a wide remit for the persecution of the independence movement. Although on page 1 it says operation Judas started in 2019, there are bugs from 2017 and 2018 which reveal important work to collect information and, above all, recordings. Although, in some cases, having listened to them all, there are striking open questions. Like when one of those arrested, Ferran Jolis, from 50:48 onwards in his testimony before the judge, refers to "friends in the Civil Guard", at which point he's cut off suddenly in an unorthodox manner.
Second, the support for everything transcribed, in many cases, doesn't exist or, if it does exist, isn't attached. As such, there is a feeling of a somewhat slapdash investigation in the air at many points. Third, there's an excess of literature which tends to suppose, almost always, that it's most likely a matter of a lack of evidence. That's strange too because an important number of the detainees had been closely monitored for some time. And fourth, many of the main accusations which are presented in a conclusive tone opening Spanish newspaper and TV stations are based on "I am told", "I've been told" or similar phrases. It's another matter that using these, often indirect, comments, they should want to incriminate, for example, president Quim Torra in the home straight of the campaign. With respect to the requests he appear in the Catalan Parliament that have been made, they are, for now, completely excessive, since only with a clear wish to manipulate can he be incriminated in anything. There will need to be, in any case, new evidence, since everything appears so exaggerated that it can only be understood in the current political climate and with an imminent election as important as Sunday's.
But all of this, which will be proved out or not with time, cannot make us lose track of the gravity of a repugnant leak. And the judicial persecution, underway once again, of a president of Catalonia.