One of the characteristics of Spanish justice since it began its quest, in 2017, with all the force and authority of the state, to reverse the situation generated by the Catalan independence referendum of October 1st and the independence declaration on the 27th of the same month, has been to award itself the power to decide who stands for an election and who does not. Little is said about this aspect which is, in practice, an anomaly in Europe. What it means is that, via the criminal justice process, candidates are removed from political races and it's all tailored to measure, decided at the discretion of the sentencing judge of the day. Only the Catalan exiles, through the European Parliament, have managed to jump over the legal wall erected by Llarena and Marchena, as well as the hurdle of the Central Electoral Commission. The latest to pay for this arbitrariness by the Supreme Court will be Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Turull, Raül Romeva and Dolors Bassa, all of them members of the government of Carles Puigdemont and to whom the offence of aggravated misuse of funds has been applied, to keep them banned from holding public office for between 12 and 13 years.
Why them and not others? To answer this question we must see things through the eyes of the Supreme Court and not with the gaze of the internally-divided pro-independence world. Featuring very prominently on the deep state's radar of repression is president Carles Puigdemont, who, due to the circumstances of life and the intelligence of his team of lawyers, coordinated by Gonzalo Boye, has become an unattainable trophy for Pablo Llarena. A big game prize and, without a doubt, the greatest frustration of this judge who has been engaged in this pursuit, as relentless as it is frustrating, for more than five years. The latest judgment from the European Court of Justice (ECJ), contrary to what the Supreme Court expected, has made it more difficult for new European Arrest Warrants to flourish. So much so that, although two weeks have passed, new warrants have not been issued and there is no scheduled date for this to happen. Since January 31st, Puigdemont (along with Toni Comín) has been breathing easy, and, I suppose, Llarena is looking for some glimmer of hope so as not to fail in what will surely be the last European warrant for the exiles in Brussels after the ECJ's warning on the reiteration in the use of this mechanism.
At a second level for the Supreme Court are Junqueras and Turull, numbers two and three of that 2017 government and, at the moment, the senior leaders of ERC and Junts respectively. The Supreme Court, which affirms that it does not do politics, does, of course, end up doing it: the number one figures of ERC and Junts have been blocked from being candidates until 2030 and 2031, while those who do have the green light, are those who could be interpreted in a general sense, and with Puigdemont in exile, as the number three figures of that 2017 insurrection, Marta Rovira and Josep Rull. The Supreme Court reserves for itself dominance over the all-important time factor, and this ends up being its trump card when it comes to applying repression and moving in singular ways. One last fact: of the four banned from office until the next decade, Turull is the one who has come out worst in relation to the period of time he was in government: a little more than three months, from July 14th to October 30th, when it was dissolved by Mariano Rajoy.
That Catalonia does not experience a situation typical of a normal country is fully evident. That after so much time it is still the Supreme Court that ends up deciding on the electoral lists, whether the vote is for municipal, Catalan, Spanish or European representatives, is a democratic anomaly that we must not become accustomed to. There can be no normal situation until all this is corrected. The PSOE's agenda for the re-encounter, beyond being a fallacy, aims to pass over this anomaly, thus passing over reality, trampling on rights and fabricating false narratives. Trying to turn liberty and the right to stand for election into something to bargain with.