The new resolution of the Supreme Court on the pro-independence leaders sentenced for 1-O has left a certain bitter taste in Esquerra's mouth. On the one hand, the Republicans celebrate that the convictions for sedition have fallen and that the judges recognize in their review of the October 2019 sentence that any non-violent process of independence has been decriminalized. However, ERC regrets that the convictions for embezzlement and disqualification against Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Dolors Bassa and Jordi Turull are upheld.
"In this second part and interpretation we see the arbitrariness of the Spanish justice, which responds more to the retrograde right than not to any other judicial criteria," said Marta Vilalta, spokesperson for Esquerra. The also deputy general secretary of the party has denounced with her decision the Supreme Court to try "on empty paper the intention of the legislator", that is, the reform of the Penal Code approved at the end of last year.
For Vilalta, that the High Court applies the embezzlement "as if there had been no modification" of this crime is further proof of "all the arbitrariness that the independence movement has suffered until today." For all these reasons, the Republican has labeled the order of the Supreme Court as a “blow to democracy”.
Be that as it may, ERC believes that there is still a long way to go and has already announced that it will go to the European courts again to appeal this time the resolution known today. He considers that justice has been done with Carme Forcadell, Josep Rull and Quim Forn, since for all three the crime of sedition has fallen, they are only sentenced for disobedience and the disqualifications fall. But the fact that the Supreme Court does, in the words of Vilalta, “ignore” the embezzlement reform shows, as he has said, that it acts with the intention of confronting the legislative power and the reform approved by the Congress of Deputies.
In this sense, the Supreme Court argues that an illegal referendum like the one on 1-O cannot be understood as an attenuated embezzlement. "It would be contrary to the most elementary legal logic to understand that whoever makes public funds their own incurs a penalty that can reach 8 years in prison and whoever uses them for criminal or unlawful activity -in our case, the holding of a referendum legally prohibited - can be punished with a fine", the judicial resolution affirms.
ERC believes the opposite, since it maintains that there has been no personal or third-party profit with this consultation, so the penalties for this crime should also be lowered. It is for this reason that those of Junqueras maintain that the judges, headed by Manuel Marchena, reinterpret the penal reform and ignore the reform of the Penal Code.
“The law is well done. (…) It is very clear”, the spokesperson insisted to defend the reform of the Penal Code. "The Supreme Court skips the rules of the game", Vilalta stressed at the same time that she considered that the modifications in the legal text have been effective "in part".
