The decision of the Barcelona Audience court this Thursday, sentencing ex-minister Miquel Buch to four and a half years in prison, has outraged the Catalan independence movement. In addition, this court ruling comes during the key weeks for negotiation of a possible investiture of Pedro Sánchez as head of a new Spanish government - a possibility which is dependent on the Socialists' agreement to an amnesty law that would end independence process prosecutions. Minutes after the court announced its decision to sentence Buch and police officer Lluís Escolà (a four-year prison sentence), Together for Catalonia (Junts) issued a statement strongly rejecting the sentence and criticising it as "unjust, completely excessive and with a clear desire for revenge". At noon, the party's spokesperson, Josep Rius, addressed the media to suggest that the events of this Thursday confirm the importance of "being paid in advance" and that the party is firming up and closing ranks over this route for the amnesty agreement.
"The position of Junts has always been firm, clear and transparent: an amnesty and self-determination. Does anyone doubt when Junts asks to be paid in advance for the amnesty law?" said the party vice-president. Asked if the sentences handed down to Miquel Buch and Lluís Escolà remove the possibility of the negotiations with the Socialists (PSOE) being fruitful, Rius avoided answering: "We will only comment on the court decision that has been given". Rius called the sentence a "barbarity, a savagery" that shows that "the 'let's go get em' ethos set down in October 2017 is still very much in force".
Independence movement stands in solidarity with Buch over a "barbaric" sentence
From Junts, general secretary Jordi Turull and president Laura Borràs also reacted through social media posts on X. For Turull, the sentence is "a real atrocity" which he describes as "revenge" and not justice: "There is a judicial leadership and a state who are totally out of control against the independence movement, and that's enough." Borràs asserted that "lawfare condemns people when it picks them out, and then the machinery completes the work". The Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont, was also indignant over the decision, maintaining that Buch and Escolà "have not been convicted for a crime which they didn't commit", but rather for the fact that they have been "loyal and politically and personally engaged" with the exiled leader: "[The state] convicted them as an act of revenge and retaliation because it couldn't have me." Thus, Puigdemont sees Spain "rotten at its foundations" and adds that the king's orders "to go all out" against the independence movement are "intact": "If they can't understand why we will never renounce unilateralism and independence, and why we distrust the Spanish state, here they have one of the many [reasons] we have accumulated".
As for reactions from the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), the current Catalan president Pere Aragonès called the sentence a "true aberration" and stressed that "now and always, amnesty and self-determination are the way". The ERC party leader, Oriol Junqueras, also spoken out, seeing it as a "new example of the Spanish justice system's repressive voraciousness against the democratic exercise of the Catalan institutions". "A barbarous sentence", added the ERC politician.