The lawyer Gonzalo Boye has stated in an interview with the German magazine Overton, that currently "Spain is not very different from Turkey" in its substantive practices. "Spain has a systemic problem, it has systemic failures. They cannot accept that minorities also have rights. Spain is not very different from Turkey today. I never had a problem as a lawyer for 20 years, and in the last 5 years I have had all types of problems as a lawyer since I have been been a defender of the Catalan minority. Spaniards do not accept that I am just "the lawyer". They see me as a representative of the Catalans. And this is typical of countries that are not democratic. Spain looks like democratic country, but in the end if you scratch the surface a little, you find all the failures of the system, they show that it is not a real democracy. And this is a problem for the European Union," he indicates.
In the interview, the lawyer directly explains the judicial offensive that he himself is facing, with an attempt to remove him from the legal process, and he relates this directly to the so-called "sewers of the state", saying that he has evidence of it. "Actually, in Spain nothing is a coincidence. Once we made a timeline and compared what I had achieved in the European courts and the actions they have taken against me. For example, when I won in Germany [in the 2018 Puigdemont case], a legal process was immediately started against me. We then won in Belgium [the exiled Catalan politicians] and persons unknown vandalized my office in a home invasion. The police, of course, do nothing," he said. Boye openly accuses the Spanish public prosecution of trying to remove him from the defence of the Catalan president in exile, Carles Puigdemont. "It's crazy, but the prosecutor's office is trying to pressure me to stop defending political exiles and to dedicate myself to other things. But I don't only defend political exiles. I have between 300 and 400 different cases. And most of them have a complicated political plot. They're trying to stop me from being a defence attorney," he says.
The future of Puigdemont
The lawyer also addresses the future of Puigdemont and the upcoming European court rulings, and is optimistic. "We think the hearings on the 24th and 25th November went well. We're quite satisfied. But now we have to wait for the decision, which will come sometime in late February or early March. It's hard for me to imagine that they won't agree with us. Not only because we are right, but because what we have defended in the Puigdemont case is the future of the EU. Why? Very simply, because now there are countries in the EU that are not fully democratic. And if we don't get justice, it means that any MEP from a minority group within these countries, or from an opposition party, could have the same problems as Puigdemont and his colleagues. After all, we are defending a better Europe, we are defending a Europe where the law is upheld, a democratic Europe. And I can't imagine that the Court of Justice of the EU will not take the same line as us", he states.
The Overton interview with Gonzalo Boye, in German - automatic subtitles available in other languages.
Boye also talks about the contradiction created by the fact that he was spied on with the Pegasus program, when he is Puigdemont's lawyer. "I was spied on. A Supreme Court judge authorized the Spanish secret service - the CNI - to spy on me. This judge had me spied on in the morning, and in the afternoon he had to rule on the allegations that I presented for president Puigdemont and his government. It is a systemic error. Spain suffers from a systemic flaw. The same judge who authorizes me to be spied on cannot decide on my allegations that afternoon," he remarks. And he complains about impunity. "They think this is normal. And they claim that the law allows it. Yes, of course. And in Iran? The law allows a lot of things there too. In Turkey as well, the law allows many things. But that doesn't mean it's right, it doesn't mean it's compatible with European legislation. It just means they have a law that allows this bestiality," he concludes.