While the procés is diluted between mutual accusations between the pro-independence parties, justice continues – albeit at an alarmingly slow pace – with the open investigations against the senior government officials who led the preparation of the October 1 referendum. Five years after the events of September 20 that resulted in the arrest of several high-ranking officials and that served as the basis for accusing the Jordis of rebellion, the TSJC has reactivated one of the cases that affects precisely two leaders who They were arrested that day. This is the investigation against the former officials of the Ministers of Vice-Presidency and Economy, Josep María Jové and Lluís Salvadó, the ERC deputies, considered the architects of the State structures.
As La Vanguardia has learned, the TSJC sent a letter last week to notify them of the end of the investigation, thus reactivating a case that had been paralyzed for a year and a half and that now faces its final stretch. The next steps will be for the instructor to dictate the order of conclusion of the summary and ask the Prosecutor's Office to send the indictment against both. The Public Ministry has the document ready and plans to send it next month, according to judicial sources.
Jové and Salvadó are prosecuted for crimes that carry prison sentences: disobedience, prevarication and embezzlement, considering that from the rear they prepared a plan to execute independence.
The case against both, who were arrested five years ago and whose records in their offices were carried out in the middle of a large demonstration outside the Conselleria d'Economia, organized by the pro-independence entities, was interrupted in April 2021 after the TSJC included in the same case the then recently appointed Minister Natàlia Garriga. The current head of Culture was also arrested that 20-S for her alleged participation in the organization and logistics of the referendum as director of services of the general secretariat of the Vice Presidency.
The final stretch of this investigation grips one of the strong men of the ERC apparatus, Josep Maria Jové. A man of little public visibility, on the other hand, wields great weight in the leadership of the party. He is president of the republican parliamentary group in Parliament and is one of the members of the dialogue table with the Government. He also participated in the negotiations with Junts for the investiture of Aragonès. Likewise, it is attributed a fundamental role in the organization and financing of the referendum on October 1 and in the design and creation of the structures of the future Catalan state. In the search that was carried out in his house, the Civil Guard found the famous Moleskine notebook that contained the roadmap to independence, as well as the Enfocats document, a powerpoint that summarized the phases of the disconnection. Both Jové and Salvadó turned to the electoral commitment to declare independence in 18 months. Days before the referendum, Salvadó warned that they would not arrive on time because the State structures would not be prepared. "It's not just a change of flag," he said in several conversations intercepted by the Civil Guard. Now, just because they weren't ready didn't mean they hadn't done anything. They had written 152 draft bills and decrees that had to be approved as of October 2 and that dealt with their own finances, social protection agency, judiciary, control of telecommunications and basic infrastructure.
