Day 7: magic ballot boxes and €500,000 in sausages
(26/02/2019) "Francoism also had the rule of law", said Jordi Cuixart; "I respect the Constitutional Court", said Carme Forcadell.
(Original published: 26/02/2019)
On the seventh day of the trial, the last two of the twelve accused, Omnium Cultural chairman Jordi Cuixart and the former Speaker of the Catalan Parliament, Carme Forcadell, testified.
Both are accused of rebellion, sedition and criminal organisation, with requests for jail sentences ranging from 8-10 years from the Attorney General's Office, for sedition, to 62 years (each) from Vox, the private prosecution, for two counts of rebellion and another of criminal organisation.
Both, like the previous ten defendants, refused to answer Vox's questions.
"I am a political prisoner," said Mr. Cuixart, "not a political prisoner." He said that the goal of his organisation was "to generate consensus" and "strengthen democracy in Catalonia, and if possible worldwide." He brought up Tiananmen Square, Rosa Parks, Ghandi and Martin Luther King. To this end, Omnium had once spent up to €500,000 in sausages for people at one of its demonstrations.
He said that after "500 days" in jail on remand he no longer sought to escape from prison "at any price" and he refuted the statements he had made to the investigating judge.
"The deal on self-government of Catalonia, the government of Catalonia, is genetically part of this collective imagination that we have as a country," he said.
He described October 1, 2017 as "the largest exercise in civil disobedience Europe has ever seen". Civil disobedience was an "instrument for transforming society", an " exercise in protest, to demonstrate our discontent".
The events of September 20 were "a turning point" but Mr. Cuixart denied having summoned demonstrators to the regional economy ministry that day, despite the prosecutor showing the court the times on a tweet of his, "everyone down to Rambla Catalunya with Gran Vía" (8:59 a.m.) and the subsequent official protest request filed with the authorities (10:13 a.m.).
He admitted the situation at the door of the building was "a bit of a mess" but he made an effort, especially to questions from his own lawyer, to describe the "peaceful" and even "festive" nature of that day. "Whoever" wanted to get through the narrow ANC passage organised by volunteers could do so, he said, "there were no controls".
He did not deny Omnium Cultural's tool was the mobilisation of the masses, which is what any association of that same type seeks, to create "a democratic tsunami". October 1 was "an exercise in collective dignity."
He did deny, as all the others have done, that there was any violence: "in no case was it violent, there was no violence".
And like everybody else, he found it difficult to remember certain key details that might incriminate him further. The prosecutor asked him if he knew there were 700 people blocking the entrance to one of the polling stations on October 1: "I do not know if there were 700 people there" he answered.
He said "Francoism also had the rule of law" and "the Civil Guard cars are also part of Catalan society".
"The right to demonstrate is defended by demonstrating: in this country, and I am referring to Spain, many people have fought to defend fundamental rights".
The judge, Manuel Marchena, told him off several times for using excessively colloquial language ("bugger", "balls") and in the end got fed up with the repeated political and ideological filler in Mr. Cuixart's replies.
Carme Forcadell, the former Speaker of the Catalan Parliament, started off with another complaint about the lack of simultaneous interpreting into Catalan, and proceeded to deny she had ignored repeated orders and warnings from the Constitutional Court in the two years prior to October 1, 2017: "We do not have the will to ignore the mandates of the Constitutional Court".
"I just complied with parliamentary regulations and fundamental rights," she said, even admitting the Constitutional Court, in the words of the prosecutor, Consuelo Madrigal, is the "supreme interpreter" of human rights.
"I respect the Constitutional Court a lot", she said, but criticised that the court "wanted the Speaker's Committee to act as a censor".
"I think that in recent years there has been a politicisation of the court and when ruling on certain issues related to Catalonia and territorial issues it has used political rather than legal criteria."
She praised the work of the regional chamber's lawyers, who "always did their duties, in an excessively zealous manner, which seems right to me".
"They refer to legal reports, we have to make political decisions."
She denied she could have allowed "anything, it is the parliament that can change things".
On September 6, 2017, the session went on until the early hours of the next morning not because separatist MPs were pressing to ride roughshod over the Constitution but because "many resolutions were attended to, precisely to guarantee the rights of all MPs".
It was "absolutely false" she had said the Catalan Police had to disobey orders from the state and "absolutely false" she had called on people to occupy polling stations on October 1.
The prosecutor showed a video to the court of Mrs. Forcadell on a stage with Messrs. Cuixart and Sánchez, encouraging the public to vote on October 1, despite the prohibition of the courts: "the best way to demonstrate that we are not afraid is going to vote on October 1 [...] we ask that you vote on October 1 [...]".
She had no idea where the ballot boxes or ballot papers had come from: "I don't think that anyone knows […] I would like to know".
She admitted she had signed what the investigating judge described in his ruling sending the twelve to trial as a declaration of independence, on October 10, "outside the chamber" and characterised the October 27 declaration as "political [...] resolution proposals without legal consequences".
Both defendants, like many of the others, suggested there were significant differences between the rule of law and what they considered to be their political duty to their voters.
They had to "go out into the streets to defend democratic values", said Mr. Cuixart, "defending democracy is a duty of all citizens" because "the rule of law is not above democracy".
"We had the duty to defend freedom of speech, the [freedom] of initiative for MPs", argued Ms. Forcadell, "parliamentary inviolability and the sovereignty of the chamber".
The trial continues tomorrow, Wednesday, February 27, with testimony from the first witnesses, who, unlike the accused, have an obligation to tell the truth and to answer questions both defence teams and prosecutors.