The searches and arrests carried out on September 20, 2017, basically in Barcelona, and the angry reaction of the independence movement in the street marked the beginning of the hot Catalan autumn, coinciding with the change of weather station, and put a further march on the runaway race towards the events that would have to come in the following weeks: 1-O referendum, declaration of independence, application of article 155, prison and exile. But above all they were the facts on which the Prosecutor's Office and the government of Mariano Rajoy began to build the accusation of sedition against the leaders of the procés that ended two years later with long prison sentences, precisely for that crime, despite the fact that they had been prosecuted for rebellion.
Two days after these events, the National Court Prosecutor's Office filed a complaint for sedition crimes in which it expressly mentioned the then presidents of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Òmnium, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart, respectively. The Prosecutor's Office considered that the demonstrations that took place in the streets of Barcelona were "tumultuous", coinciding with the arguments given by the Minister of the Interior, Juan Ignacio Zoido, and the Executive's spokesman, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, who justified the police reinforcements in Barcelona repeatedly in the riotous adjective. The term was not gratuitous since article 544 of the Penal Code, which defines the crime of sedition, requires a "public and tumultuous" uprising for the criminal type to be fulfilled.
The main scene of 20-S, not the only one, was the Ministry of Economy of the Generalitat, then directed by Oriol Junqueras. The investigating judge number 13 of Barcelona Juan Antonio Ramírez Sunyer, who died in November 2018, ordered a macro-operation by the Civil Guard to unravel the logistics of the referendum that had been called by the Government of the Generalitat for October 1 and that the Constitutional Court had declared illegal. At 8:00 in the morning, Operation Anubis began, whose objective was the computer systems that were going to be used in the voting on October 1.
The Civil Guard carried out more than 41 searches and 14 arrests in private homes in Barcelona and other towns such as Rubí or Sabadell, including those of Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó, then Secretary General of Economy and Secretary of Hisenda, respectively, both of the maximum confidence of the then vice-president, Oriol Junqueras. The two are prosecuted and pending trial, along with other people, for the crimes of disobedience, prevarication and embezzlement, considering that from the rear they prepared a plan to execute independence. Precisely in the search at Jové's home that September 20, the Civil Guard seized the Moleskine notebook and the Enfocats document, keys to act against the procés.
In addition to Jové and Salvadó, seven other senior officials of the Generalitat were arrested. Among them, the general director of Patrimonio, Francesc Sutrias, and the two top managers of the Center for Telecommunications and Information Technologies (CTTI), Josué Sallent and David Franco, stand out. Businessmen who were linked to the logistics of 1-O were also arrested.
In parallel, the Civil Guard entered different official dependencies of the Generalitat. In addition to the Economy, the Ministry of Governance, the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Center for Telecommunications and Information Technologies (CTTI), the Office of Foreign Affairs, the Catalan Institute of Finance and the Catalan Tax Agency were registered.
From 8:30 a.m., pro-independence militants began to gather spontaneously in front of the headquarters of the Department of Economy, at the intersection between Ramba Catalunya and Gran Via, where the judicial procession had arrived, with the judicial secretary Montserrat del Toro, in front. The first leader to attend the protest was the then president of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), Jordi Sànchez, who tried to channel it. In fact, the pro-independence entities ANC and Òmnium began to send messages with this intention and the then president of the latter, Jordi Cuixart, joined Sànchez.
One of the best-known scenes of that day is that of the two leaders of the pro-independence entities climbing on top of a Civil Guard car trying to break up the demonstration -which had tens of thousands of participants throughout the day- at high hours of the night, after Sànchez tried to mediate between the protesters and the judicial delegation and the Civil Guard agents to find them a safe exit from the building, which the latter deemed impossible. This was one of the arguments of Sànchez's defense in the trial that took place a year and a half later in the Supreme Court.
However, in the sentence that sentenced Sànchez to nine years in prison, the court assured that the ANC opted to "put obstacles, harass and, of course, discredit before the citizens, both the exercise of the jurisdictional function by magistrates of the judicial power Spanish as the work of the Civil Guard agents who, acting as Judicial Police, tried to execute the search warrant. As an example of Jordi Sànchez's leadership, the magistrates pointed to the "development" and "even the self-confidence" with which he addressed some of the police officers who tried to assume his role. In fact, the court stressed that the defendant "had what he should or should not do", refused a possible dismissal of the protest and showed "reluctance" to the need to open a wider corridor or "establish a wider perimeter" . The judicial resolution considered it proven that Sànchez indicated that a partial withdrawal of the concentrates was not possible and that he resorted to an “incendiary tone in some of his messages: “they have declared war”, he even affirmed.
In any case, there is much controversy about the peaceful or violent nature of the concentration. The entities tried to decongest by setting up an improvised stage on Gran Via in the middle of the afternoon. The musical performances contributed to a general festive and uneventful atmosphere, already common in this type of pro-independence demonstrations. However, the attitude of a minority was more aggressive, with slogans to prevent the exit of the judicial delegation and the destruction of Civil Guard cars parked in front of the Ministry as main examples.
The then Vice President of the Generalitat and head of Economy, Oriol Juqueras, also arrived at the Department of the Economy in the middle of the afternoon to give support to his subordinates and ask the demonstrators for calm. During the trial in the Supreme Court, Junqueras maintained that the demonstration was "peaceful" and gave as an example of this that the Virolai was heard, a song dedicated to the Virgin of Montserrat, identified as the "mother of the Spaniards". In any case, the day after the events, Junqueras acknowledged that the operation altered the referendum.
The delegation arrived around 8:00 am and the agents did not leave the building until the morning of the following day. The judicial secretary, Montserrat del Toro, left the Department between 11:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. on the 20th, and she did so by literally jumping into an adjacent building, in this case the Coliseum theater, and leaving the premises mixed with the spectators who were leaving the performance and accompanied by agents of the Mossos d'Esquadra dressed in civilian clothes. At the trial, where Del Toro testified, she told the court that she was so "scared" that she even asked for a helicopter because "it was impossible to get out" in the face of the "crowd of people."
The role of the then Major of the Mossos d'Esquadra, Josep Lluís Trapero, and the Catalan police intendant and person in charge of the device, Teresa Laplana, in that episode led them to be prosecuted and tried for sedition in the National Court and finally acquitted. . Both were accused of maintaining a "deliberate passivity" that favored concentration for hours. However, the acquittal statement highlights that the police method of mediation was “exposed” before using force.
“Violent reaction against citizens who did not show special aggressiveness was avoided from the first moment; when there was a certain risk of theft of the weapons that were in the Civil Guard vehicles, the discreet action of agents intensified; all the possibilities of mediation with those who set themselves up as leaders of the protest were exhausted, even though they were the main representatives of the independence movement, but because of this they were especially apt to convince the gathered crowd; He did not give in to the pressure of those independence leaders.”
Another significant episode of the day took place not far from the Conselleria. At noon, plainclothes and riot police officers from the National Police appeared at the CUP headquarters, on Casp street in Barcelona. The agents tried to enter the headquarters to seize propaganda material for 1-O but they were unsuccessful: the militants of the independence party prevented them because the police did not have a court order.
Thus began hours and hours of tension between the agents and a crowd of militants sitting in front of the headquarters. The coupero leaders, led by deputies and former deputies David Fernàndez, Anna Gabriel, Quim Arrufat or Carles Riera, asked their acolytes for calm to avoid charges.
