The judge has archived the case that she opened against the former mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau following two complaints that accused her of crimes of hate and prevarication for suspending the City Council's relations with Israel, last February, in protest of its policy. with Palestine.
In an order, to which EFE has had access, the head of the investigating court number 5 of Barcelona rules out that Colau's decree represented a "direct or indirect incitement to hatred" against the Israeli people and that the former mayor lacked the powers to agree the suspension of relations with Israel.
The investigation stems from a complaint filed by lawyers Francesc Jufresa and Ferran Grases and a complaint from Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM), after Colau decreed the temporary suspension of relations with Tel Aviv and twinning with the cities. of Tel Aviv and Gaza, which former mayor Joan Clos approved in 1998.
The complainants maintained that Colau had committed a hate crime in the letter he addressed to the Israeli Prime Minister and the Israeli Embassy stating that the City Council was temporarily suspending its relations with the country due to its policy of annexation of territories and the violation of human rights. against the Palestinian population.
However, the judge considers that, "whether the communication to the Israeli authorities in relation to the conflict with Palestine is politically opportune or not," these are "considerations" in relation to Israel and its official institutions that do not fit into the crime of hate.
Regarding the lack of powers claimed by the complaints, the instructor recalls that the twinning with Tel Aviv and Gaza was agreed by another mayor, the socialist Joan Clos, "in the framework of cooperation fostered by the Oslo peace agreements" between Israel and the PLO.
The mayor has intervened on behalf of Barcelona in these cooperative relations between both cities, says the judge, who concludes that Colau's decision is "a matter of a political nature that must be assessed through the mechanisms of municipal activity."
According to the judge, the only limitations to a mayoral agreement is that there is at least one favorable report and that "no specific legal obligations or responsibilities to be fulfilled by Barcelona City Council arise" from it, both under international law and legal internal.
In any case, the order states, this issue should be resolved within the framework of an administrative procedure that resolves whether the decree suspending relations with Israel "falls within the powers granted to the mayor by the Municipal Charter of Barcelona."
Likewise, the magistrate warns the complainants that they have not alleged the reasons why the mayor's decision should have been submitted to the full City Council, another of the reasons on which they based their accusation of prevarication against Ada Colau.
Last September, the new mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, signed a decree to reestablish the council's relations with Israel.
The complaint for the suspension of relations with Israel represented the fifth criminal investigation that was opened against Colau for events linked to his mandate: two of them for supposedly pressuring investment funds to allocate their homes for social rental, one for the alleged concession arbitrary subsidies to related entities and another for planning the "superillas" in the Eixample of the Catalan capital.
