The Prosecutor's Office has asked this Wednesday for two years of disqualification for the ex-mayor of Sabadell Maties Serracant for not preventing the celebration of the referendum on October 1, 2017. During the trial that began today in the co-capital of Vallès Occidental, the prosecutor raised the definitive preliminary conclusions.
The public ministry maintains that "the participation" of the former mayor – of the Crida per Sabadell, a local brand of the CUP – has been accredited in the consultation of October 1, 2017, declared illegal by the Constitutional Court (TC), and asks for He two years of disqualification and a fine for disobeying the instructions of the courts.
Serracant, who is now in the Department of Territory led by Minister Juli Fernàndez (ERC), with whom he took turns in the mayor's office of Sabadell in the 2015-2019 term, answered all parties. In response to the Prosecutor's Office, after a question about whether he fulfilled the mandate of the High Court, he said that "the duty to prevent went far beyond" his capabilities. "No one could prevent the majority citizen mobilization," he replied.
The leader has acknowledged that on September 7, 2017 he approved a mayoral decree to facilitate the referendum "in force" of the referendum law, approved by Parliament and suspended a few hours later by the TC. But after the suspension, he explained, the collaboration with the organization of the consultation stopped, although the popular mobilization could not be stopped.
The prosecutor has asked Serracant if he took any action to prevent it. "Our instruction was to serve the rest of the police forces; there was an instruction for the custody of ordinary ballot boxes and it was complied with," she assured. "It is obvious that neither the Municipal Police nor the Mossos d'Esquadra nor the rest of the bodies could close the centers," she added in this regard.
The former councilor for education and deputy mayor of Serracant, Joan Berlanga, summoned as a witness, has declared that he does not remember "that neither an hour of municipal staff nor a euro from the town hall was allocated to holding the referendum." "The situation overwhelmed us: the schools, the ampas, the people who participated in it. We did not know where the ballot boxes or the computers came from. It was not a process led by the city council," Berlanga remarked.
The Prosecutor's Office, however, maintains the request for a sentence because, in its opinion, "the defendant facilitated or did not prevent the actions that led to the vote on October 1." For his part, the defense lawyer has requested Serracant's acquittal, considering that no type of disobedience has been proven.
A hundred people participated in a rally in solidarity with Serracant before the trial, called by the pro-independence organization Crida per Sabadell. Among them, the Councilor of Territory, the suspended president of the Parliament, Laura Borràs (Junts) or the deputy from Sabadell Xavier Pallicer (CUP).
