At the beginning of April, the Court of Accounts made its first unequivocal move to clarify that the persecution of the Catalan independence movement and the case it is investigating against 35 former high-ranking officials of the governments of Artur Mas and Carles Puigdemont, the latter with Oriol Junqueras as vice-president, over the public spending on the referendum of October 1st, 2017 and the promotion of Catalonia abroad between the years 2011 and 2017, has little or nothing to do, for now, with the future amnesty law. Well, this Tuesday, the prosecutors responded with a demand for both governments to be sentenced to return 3 million euros. It is not considered enough that the amnesty relating to the independence process has had the initial green light from the Congress of Deputies to put an end to any connected case. Now, all that is missing is the positioning of Societat Civil Catalana, whose private prosecution raises this figure to something considerably greater: more than 5 million euros.
When you break it down, the prosecution service's text requests that 883,695 euros spent to organize the 1st October referendum and another 2,208,503 euros for the promotion of Catalonia abroad between the years 2011 and 2017 should be returned to the Generalitat. It is obvious that the Court of Accounts should have slowed down the case, pending the approval of the amnesty, since it is not properly a court, but an auditing body for the accounts and economic management of the state and public sector, whose 12 members are appointed by the Spanish houses of parliament, six by Congress and six by the Senate. The diverse recruitment of the councillors of the Court of Accounts - currently, auditors or lawyers, chartered accountants, judges and prosecutors, university professors and civil servants, and liberal professionals - is indicative of a barrier that is far removed from any court of justice.
We are also talking about an investigation that, in recent years, has been interrupted sufficiently for it be left on hold, put on the back burner, and later, after the amnesty law has its final approval in the Spanish Cortes, it would have an appropriate denouement. This has not been the case and, on the contrary, the option taken has been to show the most sour face of the Spanish state with respect to Catalan independentism. The one that makes it clear that, in the state institutions, the amnesty causes irritation and is not a pleasant meal to digest. And this, despite the fact that since November 2021, the Court of Accounts has been in the hands of what tends to be called a progressive majority, given that it is held by the Socialists and their parliamentary allies.
The option taken at the Court of Accounts has been to show the most sour face of the Spanish state with respect to Catalan independentism.
According to the prosecutor in the case, Manuel Martín-Granizo, and as justification for maintaining the request for a conviction, "the transformation of a legal proposal [that of the amnesty] into a rule that will extinguish the accounting responsibility elucidated here is a future fact and not exactly uncertain, but also not fully certain, due to the fact that the date of the law's entry into force and its exact content and scope are unknown." If the parliamentary deadlines for the rejection of the law in the Senate, its return to Congress, and its final approval are maintained and become a definitive legislative reality between May and June, we will enter a new scenario in which there will have to be, in principle, a definitive closing of the case. Or that, at least, is what is expected. But it cannot be denied that the tentacles of the State will have played the game to the end and created all possible difficulties.