Day 4: former regional ministers deny violence or crime, express doubts over choice between law and politics
(19/02/2019) Court allows Raul Romeva 20 minutes to talk about politics; Jordi Turull cannot recall many key details when asked by the prosecutor.
(Original published: 19/02/2019)
On this fourth day of the trial of the twelve accused Catalan separatists at the Supreme Court in Madrid, the former spokesman for the Catalan Government, Jordi Turull (PDeCat), answered questions from the Attorney General's Office and the Public Prosecutor, while the former regional foreign affairs minister, Raúl Romeva (Esquerra), chose to answer only those of his lawyer, reflecting the decisions taken last week by Joaquim Forn (PDeCat), who chose to answer the prosecution questions, and Oriol Junqueras (Esquerra), who did not.
Mr. Turull, initially angry, outraged and combative, launched into answering questions from the Prosecutor's Office, although Judge Marchena had to remind him several times to focus on his answers instead of rambling.
He said that the declaration of independence was the "expression of political will" and that his reference documents were Carles Puigdemont's programme for government and his party's electoral manifesto: "We were Together for Yes, yes for independence, not just because we were together".
In lengthy political and philosophical answers to his lawyer's questions, Mr. Romeva defined himself—just like Mr. Junqueras did last week—as "a political prisoner", "European, democrat and republican" and said that he had "always" for "my whole life", defended the right to self-determination, "with the conviction that building peace is the best possible axis for building a community".
He added that "no international or European treaty", nor the Spanish Constitution "in any of its articles", prohibits such a right. Article II of the Spanish Constitution in fact stipulates that "it is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards".
Mr. Turull defended the citizens of Catalonia, who "are not sheep" and who "have standards, this is the 21st Century" and, like Mr. Forn last week, could not remember many key details about the questions asked by the Prosecutor's and Attorney General's offices.
Questioned about a meeting in August 2016 and the corresponding note in his diary ("concerned about the destabilisation of the Catalan Parliament"), he replied that "I was there to talk about my own stuff", that he had many meetings and that "I do not remember". Regarding a warning from the Constitutional Court, he said he had learnt about it "in the press", that "I do not remember exactly", or that "it was Friday".
The only observable fact in the first 20 minutes of Mr. Romeva's opening statements was that in 2015 he had joined the Together for Yes electoral list.
Both defendants denied any knowledge of the strategic document called Enfocats, unearthed by the Civil Guard during the search of the house of Josep María Jové. Mr. Turull, while admitting he knew the former secretary general of the regional economy ministry, said he had "never" seen the document, until he did so "on the investigation's cloud", in reference to the virtual server the trial documents are kept on; Mr. Romeva said he had no knowledge "either of the text itself, or the existence of the text, or anyone who knew about it".
Both men also denied their actions constituted any kind of crime. Mr. Turull said that "we understood that everything was perfectly legal" and that, although "it is obvious" the policing measures on October 1 were necessary because the regional government had not called off the vote, "calling a referendum was expressly decriminalised". Mr. Romeva stated that "what we did is lawful, legitimate, I would even say legal", and that "demonstrating can never be considered an uprising".
Mr. Turull denied having seen a key police report warning of the risks of for October 1—"no, no, I have not read it"—and denied the use of public funds to organise the referendum.
Both the Prosecutor's Office and the Attorney General's Office asked him about the Civisme ad campaign—the adverts with the train tracks and the slogan "you were born with the ability to decide"—approved "in a joint collective manner" by the regional government, along with the ad budget of €3.43 million, and the ads in the press with the regional government's logo on them. "When I arrived at the department", he said: "they told me there wasn't any money", adding that "there are no orders, there are no invoices, there is nothing at all" and that "not one euro was spent on the referendum".
He also denied the Catalan government had any commercial relationship with the postal company Unipost. The Prosecutor's Office showed the court an invoice from that company, with the details of the regional government on it, including Mr. Turull's department, and he replied "This is not from the Catalan government, the Catalan government has nothing at all to do with Unipost".
"It's from Unipost", replied the prosecutor. "There is no invoice from Unipost because nothing was ordered", insisted Mr. Turull, adding later that "the chairwoman of Unipost stated there were no such invoices".
The defendant also failed to explain where the universal electoral roll for the referendum had come from—"no idea"—how the ballot boxes had arrived at the polling stations—"to this day I still do not know how they were acquired"—when he had heard the clerk of the court had had to leave by the building next door on September 20—"the next day, I would say"—or when he had realised Civil Guard vehicles had been destroyed—"the next day, in the media".
He stated that many replicas of the referendum web page had been created not to avoid the courts but as a defence against the threat of cyber-attacks.
Both men also spoke of the difficulty of tallying up the law with politics—as if the two things were incompatible or as if they did not have clear priorities—and rejected the use of violence, which "has no justification" (Turull), "no, never, absolutely not, never ever (Romeva).
Mr. Turull accused the Spanish Government of repeatedly violating Constitutional Court rulings and Mr. Romeva said that while he was sitting in the dock, "those who threaten the Europe of rights and freedoms are today sitting with the prosecution".
The former Catalan government spokesman argued several times that as a politician he had to "ponder" whether or not the law, courts and multiple court orders—telling them to stop—were more important than politics and society: "a politician has to weigh it all up".
Asked by Rosa María Seoane (Attorney General) how, then, he had interpreted the orders of the Constitutional Court in reality, Mr. Turull answered that "if there is political will, a solution can be found".
Similarly, Mr. Romeva stated that "the principle of democratic legitimacy is on an equal footing to the principle of legality".