Next Thursday, the 15th, the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Artur Mas, will testify as a defendant in relation to the judicial process being pursued in the Superior Court of Catalonia for disobeying the Constitutional Court. The date coincides with the 75th anniversary of the execution of Lluís Companys. It is unclear whether the choice of that specific day is a coincidence or the result of a conscious decision by the investigating judge.
What does not seem to be a coincidence is the validity of Article 330.4 of the Organic Law of the Judiciary, which allows half of the magistrates of the Civil and Criminal Chamber of each Superior Court of Justice to be appointed from a shortlist proposed by the respective regional parliament. This is the provision that was used to appoint the magistrate in charge of the procedure against Mas in the Catalan Superior Court. It is worth noting that the proposal for this appointment was pushed forward by CiU, the party of the now-indicted individual.
The language of Cervantes, still a co-official language in Catalonia, is rich in aphorisms, and one very appropriate for this occasion is that “no one can be judge and party” or “don’t set a fox to guard the henhouse.”
Article 330.4 of the Organic Law of the Judiciary is a provision contrary to Article 117 of the Constitution, which proclaims the independence of judges. With the state and regional legislative power controlling the appointment of judges directly or indirectly (through the General Council of the Judiciary), it can be said that our country has certain gaps in its Rule of Law.
The indictment against Mas concerns three crimes: serious disobedience committed by public authorities (Article 410.1 of the Penal Code), perversion of justice (Article 404), and embezzlement of public funds (Article 433). We were surprised to hear the “most honorable” defendant say, “legally I did not disobey, politically what happened was a democratic rebellion against the Spanish State: I set up the ballot boxes.”
The testimonies given on July 13 and 30 at the headquarters of the TSJ of Catalonia have revealed the same social fracture that existed in the Basque Country in the 1980s and 90s, where many remain silent or look the other way, others shout praises to Casanova, Companys, and Pujol, and a few outcasts dare to tell the truth before the investigator, in a room decorated with the red and yellow flag.
Very few school principals in Catalonia, despite the pressures received, refused to hand over the keys so that the so-called “participatory process” of 9-N, suspended by the Constitutional Court, could take place in those schools. They have borne the brunt of the social blackmail that the religion of nationalism imposes on its infidels.
I hope and wish that Artur Mas will tell us the truth on the 15th and clarify the confirmed pressures that teachers suffered to hand over their schools and place the ballot boxes prohibited by the Constitutional Court in them. I hope and wish that the investigator will be guided only by legality because any judicial system that does not function independently makes the rest of the citizens who are subject to it prisoners of its inefficiency. We eagerly await to see if, after a possible disqualification from holding public office, Mas will decide to stay in Catalonia or self-exile to Liechtenstein.