MADRID — The simmering conflict over Catalan independence roared back to the center of Spanish attention on Tuesday, as 12 people went on trial for their roles in the botched secession attempt of 2017, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez scrambled to keep the issue from toppling his government.

The eagerly anticipated trial before the Spanish Supreme Court in Madrid has drawn enormous attention and is being broadcast live on national television, but it could soon be overshadowed by the political crisis unfolding just blocks away, in Parliament.

On Wednesday, Mr. Sánchez’s minority Socialist government faces a crucial parliamentary vote on his national budget. If a majority of lawmakers reject it, including Catalan lawmakers who have so far backed the prime minister, he will almost certainly be forced to call elections.

With Spain’s government hanging in the balance, the Supreme Court is under intense pressure to demonstrate that it can remain impartial and above politics in a case that has ignited passions and recriminations. The Catalan separatist leaders were indicted on charges that include rebellion, after holding an independence referendum and then declaring independence in October 2017 — moves the Spanish courts ruled unconstitutional. </s> Madrid trial of separatists seen as the most important since Spain’s return to democracy

This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

A little less than 16 months ago, the nine men and three women sitting on the plush burgundy benches of Madrid’s supreme court were ministers in the Catalan regional government and high-profile civic leaders.

On Tuesday morning, however, they stepped out of prison vans to take their places as the defendants in landmark proceedings variously described as the trial of the century, a “stress test for Spanish democracy”, and the single most important judicial event the country has seen since the end of the Franco dictatorship.

The dozen are standing trial over their alleged roles in the regional independence crisis that pitched Spain into its worst political turmoil for four decades.

Spain says 'disinformation’ surrounds Catalan separatists’ trial Read more

During the next three months, seven supreme court judges will investigate the roles the accused played in the run-up to the independence referendum in October 2017 and the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence.

Nine of the defendants – who include the former Catalan vice-president Oriol Junqueras, the former speaker of the Catalan parliament Carme Forcadell and two influential grassroots activists, Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez – are accused of rebellion, which carries a prison sentence of up to 25 years.

Other charges include sedition and the misuse of public funds.

The tone for the trial was quickly set by the heavy police and media presence, the protesters outside the court who greeted the arrival of Catalonia’s pro-independence president, Quim Torra, with cries of “Coup perpetrator!”, and by the first defence lawyer to speak.

Junqueras’ advocate, Andreu Van den Eynde, dismissed the case as a politically motivated exercise and told the court that prosecutors were trying to criminalise displays of free expression and curtail the defendants’ right to argue for self-determination.

“No international or EU law blocks the secession of a regional entity; self-determination is synonymous with peace and not war,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 11 September 2017: an aerial view of people waving a giant banner saying ‘Independence now’ during a demonstration in Barcelona. Photograph: Roser Vilallonga/AFP/Getty Images

Van den Eynde, who is also representing the former Catalan foreign minister Raül Romeva, said his clients’ freedom of expression had been violated.

“The political arena is a free space,” he said. “Freedom of expression extends even to those ideas that shock and offend.”

He described the complicated legal process as a “procedural vaudeville” and said it was intended to put Catalan independence itself on trial.

Jordi Pina, a lawyer representing the Catalan MP and former civil society leader Jordi Sànchez, called for the court to allow testimony from King Felipe, arguing that the Spanish monarch’s controversial speech two days after the referendum had been cited in prosecution documents.

The king had accused Catalan authorities of attempting to break “the unity of Spain” and warned that their push for independence could risk the country’s social and economic stability.

Pina also urged the court to reconsider its decision not to allow testimony from the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont via videolink from Brussels.

The trial – which began shortly after 10.20am on Tuesday and is being broadcast on television – will focus on the Puigdemont government’s decision to hold the referendum despite repeated warnings that it would violate the constitution, which stresses the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation”.

Although Catalan pro-independence parties have never managed to win 50% of the vote in the regional parliament, and although polls consistently show Catalonia is roughly evenly split over the independence issue, Puigdemont’s administration chose to press ahead with the vote.

Pro-independence parties managed to get a law paving the way for the referendum passed in the regional parliament in early September 2017, despite furious objections from opposition MPs, who complained that usual procedures had been disregarded.

The law was subsequently suspended and eventually struck down by Spain’s constitutional court.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 14 July 2018: Pictures of the Catalan leaders Carme Forcadel, Anna Gabriel, Carles Puigdemont, Marta Rovira, Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Turull and Clara Ponsati are held up by pro-independence protesters in Barcelona. Photograph: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images

But the Catalan government opted to hold the referendum, which was marred by violence. Spanish police officers raided polling stations, charged crowds with batons and fired rubber bullets in their attempts to stop the vote.

According to the Catalan government, about 2.3 million of Catalonia’s 5.3 million registered voters – 43% – took part in the referendum, and about 90% of participants backed independence. The vote was largely boycotted by unionist Catalans.

On 27 October, shortly after secessionist Catalan MPs voted to declare independence, the Spanish government of the then prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, won senate backing to sack Puigdemont and his cabinet and assume direct control of Catalonia.

Defence lawyers will seek to undermine the rebellion charges. They will point out that, under Spanish law, rebellion consists of “revolting violently and publicly”, and argue that none of those charged with the offence engaged in violence.

Speaking to the Guardian and a small group of other European reporters in Madrid on the eve of the trial, the Catalan president, Quim Torra, criticised the charges.

“The only violence we saw throughout September and October [2017] was from the Spanish police,” he said. “They tried to stop citizens from going to vote peacefully on 1 October. But this has all been turned on its head. There was no violence, everyone saw there was no violence.”

The case will once again bring international attention to the enduring tensions between the Madrid government and the pro-independence regional government of Catalonia.

The president of the supreme court, Carlos Lesmes, has described the proceedings as “the most important trial that we’ve held since democracy [returned]”.

But on Monday night, Torra said: “As far as we’re concerned, Spanish justice has pretty much zero credibility.”

His sacked predecessor, meanwhile, called the trial a “stress test for Spanish democracy” and a test for the country’s judiciary.

Speaking in Berlin on Tuesday, Puigdemont described his former colleagues on trial as “honourable, innocent, democratic people,” and insisted there were “no criminal violations of the Spanish criminal law”.

The start of the trial led some Catalan pro-independence protesters to briefly block several roads before dawn, setting fire to tyres and holding up traffic. Protests were called in Barcelona for 7pm. </s> In Spain today, the trial of a group of Catalonian separatist leaders will end.

The trial started in February, but the road into the court system for the activists started long before then.

They're facing charges of rebellion, disobedience and misuse of public funds, all related to the independence referendum held on October first, 2017. The referendum was declared illegal by the Spanish government, which moved to punish those involved immediately.

By October 30th, 2017, the President of the newly declared Catalonian republic, Carlos Puigdemont, and his entire cabinet were charged with sedition.

Within days, eight ministers who had remained in the country were detained without bail - others were swept up by the justice system later that year. After being detained for more than a year, six of the jailed activists began a hunger strike in December of 2018 - it ended 20 days later.

And by February of this year, the case against them opened in Spain's Supreme Court. The trial has heard over 300 witnesses, and rejected at least 50.

The verdict is not expected until at least after the summer.

Euronews sums up the case in the report in the video player above </s> BERLIN, Feb 12 (Reuters) - A trial of 12 Catalan political leaders in Madrid on Tuesday is a stress test for Spain’s judicial system and its democracy, former leader of Catalonia, living in self-imposed exile in Belgium, Carles Puigdemont said during a conference in Berlin.

The political leaders face charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for their part in an illegal declaration of independence by the northeastern region in October, 2017. (Reporting by Paul Day; Editing by Jesus Aguado) </s> MADRID: Two jailed Catalan separatist leaders awaiting trial in a Spanish jail over their role in last year’s failed independence bid began a hunger strike on Saturday, their lawyer said.

Jordi Sanchez, the former head of the influential grassroots ANC independence movement, and Jordi Turull, a former minister in the Catalan regional government, are taking this step to “raise awareness” of their unfair treatment by Spain’s justice system, lawyer Jordi Pina told a news conference in Barcelona.

“I did not recommend this action, it is a decision of my clients and they have my full support,” he added.

In a statement read by Pina, the two men accused Spain’s Constitutional Court of blocking their appeals against their imprisonment from reaching the European Court of Human Rights. Pina said he did not know if the five other Catalan separatist leaders jailed in the Lledoners penitentiary located some 70 kilometres (43 miles) north of Barcelona would later join the hunger strike.

Spain’s Supreme Court in October ordered a total of 18 former Catalan separatist leaders to stand trial over last year’s declaration of independence.

Prosecutors are seeking jail terms of up to 25 years on charges of rebellion or misuse of public funds over the failed secession bid. The sensitive trial is expected to start in early 2019 and will focus on the attempt by Catalan leaders to break away from Spain in October 2017 by staging a referendum despite a court ban and subsequently proclaiming independence.

Nine of the separatists remain in pre-trial detention, including the seven at the Lledoners prison who have been in jail for the last eight to 13 months without trial.

The announcement of the hunger strike comes a day after the first photo of the seven jailed Catalan leaders at the Lledoners prison was released by grassroots pro-independence organisation Omnium Cultural.

The picture — which was splashed on the cover of Catalan newspapers on Saturday — shows the seven men smiling and wearing casual clothes in one of the courtyards of the prison.

Omnium Cultural said it released the picture to send a message of “unity” ahead of the start of their trial.

In a statement, Catalan regional president Quim Torra expressed his “solidarity” with the two prisoners who began a hunger strike.

“This dramatic and drastic measure is being taken because of what we find to be the complete violation of citizens’ rights, civil and political rights, and of respect for the legal process. It’s my personal view that penal law is being used for vengeance,” he added. </s> MADRID — Spain’s Supreme Court is stripping six prominent Catalan politicians of public office for trying to make the northeastern region of the country independent.

Judge Pablo Llarena also ruled Tuesday that the six secessionists be sent to trial on charges of rebellion, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 30 years.

Those charged include former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, who is fighting extradition from Germany, and former regional Vice-President Oriol Junqueras.

Llarena left it up to the Catalan regional parliament, where the rebellion defendants now are lawmakers, whether to replace them.

Llarena was tasked with investigating what took place in Catalonia in October, when Puigdemont’s government disobeyed a court ban on holding a secession vote and the regional parliament unilaterally declared independence.

The events triggered Spain’s most severe political crisis in decades. </s> MADRID — The battle in court is coming to a close. But the political fight is just getting started.

The case against 12 Catalan leaders on charges that include violent rebellion and sedition is scheduled to conclude Wednesday, exactly four months after it began.

The defendants, nine of whom have been in preventive custody for over a year, have been on trial since February 12 for their participation in the Catalan regional government’s failed bid for independence in 2017.

Three of them — former Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras, the Catalan National Assembly’s Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart of the pro-independence Òmnium Cultural association — face potential jail sentences between 17 and 25 years if found guilty.

A verdict, and any resulting sentences, isn’t expected until the fall, after the court has reviewed the evidence provided by prosecutors, defendants and hundreds of witnesses. But the process has already deepened the fraught fault lines between Catalonia and Spanish authorities in Madrid.

Anger over the trial, accusations of bias and the detention of the high-profile defendants have given new life to Catalonia’s nationalists, whose spirits were sagging after their failed attempt to break away. And nationally, the issue continues to burn; it contributed to the fall of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government earlier this year.

The Supreme Court’s president has described the trial as “the most important that we have had in the democratic era.”

As the judicial process winds down and both sides await the verdict, the struggle to control the narrative and determine what happens next is already well under way.

Catalonia’s separatists may be outraged over a judicial process they have characterized as political persecution. But it comes at a good time for their cause.

Since their failed attempt to secede, the region’s separatists have focused their messaging on the judiciary's decision to keep nine of the 12 defendants behind bars.

Supporters have held a series of mass demonstrations and have hung yellow ribbons — symbolizing solidarity with the prisoners — in public spaces across the region. On several occasions, these displays have prompted clashes between Catalan nationalists and Spanish unionists, who oppose the region’s push to break away from Madrid.

“The biggest mobilizing factor for the independence cause over the last year or so has been the jailing of the defendants in the Supreme Court trial,” said Jordi Amat, a Catalan writer and commentator.

At a time when morale might otherwise have flagged, “the issue of the prisoners” has become a rallying cry.

Fury over the issue has benefited Catalonia’s inexperienced leader, Quim Torra, as he struggles to keep control of the independence movement.

Torra, who has said he is preparing for the trial’s verdict by consulting colleagues and grassroots independence organizations on how to respond to it, has suggested there will be a strong popular backlash if any of the defendants are found guilty.

“When we see the sentences, they might turn out to be another enormous mistake by the powers in Spain,” Catalan Foreign Minister Alfred Bosch told POLITICO.

“Obviously we won’t just sit there. We’ll have to react — we believe we are entitled to react in a civic, peaceful way.”

The trial’s outcome will also affect the institutional relationship between Catalonia and Madrid.

Since taking office last year, Sánchez has attempted to engage with the Catalan government, restoring a bilateral working group and holding regular meetings with Torra.

However, the prime minister's efforts to find common ground with Catalan lawmakers, offering to meet a long-held demand of the secessionists to appoint a facilitator in talks between pro-independence and pro-unity political parties, failed, triggering April's general election.

Having won that election, Sánchez is now attempting to form a new government. Crucially, he may be able to do so without the support of pro-independence parties, which would mean they no longer hold the political leverage they enjoyed during his first year in government.

Should that come to pass, some observers expect that Torra will look for other ways of exerting pressure on Madrid. One of them would be to respond to any guilty verdicts by calling a regional election to capitalize on public outrage over the trial and broaden the secessionist parties’ narrow majority in the Catalan parliament.

Complicating that plan, however, is the competition between the two leading Catalan nationalist forces. Holding another election would put Torra’s Junts per Catalunya at risk of losing support to its most dangerous rival, the similarly separatist Catalan Republican Left.

“We’ve got to where we are because neither of these two parties has wanted to be seen to be betraying its electoral support base,” said Oriol Bartomeus, a political scientist at Barcelona’s Autonomous University.

The two parties, he said, will be vying to prove “who is more committed to independence, who is willing to take more risks, who disobeys more.”

Heavy sentences for the defendants would add pressure on the two parties, who “wouldn’t be able to justify [reaching agreements with the Spanish government] to their supporters,” La Vanguardia columnist Lola García noted.

Benefits for the right

The resulting escalation would continue to force the Catalan issue up the national agenda, drawing attention from Sánchez’s agenda, which includes proposed reforms in areas such as euthanasia, workers’ rights and gender equality, as well as efforts to cement his status as a prominent and influential European leader.

That would benefit Spain’s fragmented and stridently unionist right. The center-right Popular Party, the liberal Ciudadanos and the far-right Vox party have all used the Catalan issue to attack Sánchez, with varying degrees of success.

The perceived threat to Spanish unity could, for example, help the Popular Party, which lost over half its congressional seats in the general election.

Sánchez’s government is already bracing itself for the likelihood that the trial’s legal fallout will drag on well beyond the fall, with appeals that could go as far as the European Court of Human Rights.

In addition to its potential to derail Sánchez’s agenda, the government also worries a protracted fight over Catalonia would damage Spain’s image internationally.

“For me this is much more than a mere battle of images,” said Irene Lozano, who heads up the Spanish government’s international image department, España Global. “For me it’s one of the biggest battles against disinformation in the world.”

The trial has already caught international attention, with the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention calling for several of the defendants to be freed and paid compensation. The plight of Catalan politicians also made a splash in Brussels last month, after elected members of the European Parliament from Catalonia who have escaped the Spanish justice system by living abroad were denied entry to the institution because Madrid has not yet filled out the paperwork that would have allowed them to enter.

The case “has helped the international community to understand what is happening and that this is not just a bunch of egotistical people who want to separate because they are wealthier [than other regions],” said Bosch, the region’s foreign minister.

The Spanish government questioned the timing of the U.N. findings, which came toward the end of the trial, and alleged that some members of the working group had a conflict of interest. The report was nevertheless a blow to Madrid, which has struggled to counter the independence movement’s slick PR machine.

An editorial on the progressive news site CTXT warned that although the end of the legal process is in sight, “it is doubtful that it will resolve the social conflict, improve co-existence or manage to cover up the fact that nobody has yet accepted political responsibility [for this crisis] on one side or the other.” </s> MADRID: Catalan separatist leaders accused of rebellion for trying to make their region independent from Spain launched their defence on Tuesday at the start of a long-awaited trial.

Sitting on benches in the ornate chamber of Madrid’s Supreme Court, the defendants faced a row of judges and a Spanish flag in proceedings broadcast live on television. Twelve defendants are in the dock over an independence referendum, held on October 1, 2017, in defiance of a court ban, and a short-lived declaration of independence.

Nine of them are charged with rebellion and three face lesser charges of disobedience and misuse of public funds. The independence bid sparked Spain’s deepest political crisis since the transition to democracy in the 1970s after the death of dictator Francisco Franco.

"This case targets political dissidence," said Andreu Van den Eynde, the lawyer for two defendants including Catalonia’s former vice president Oriol Junqueras, who could face up to 25 years in jail.

The lawyer accused authorities of violating the defendants’ fundamental rights. Spain has been forced to defend its judiciary against criticism. In a rare move, Spanish embassies in several European capitals and further afield briefed reporters on Monday and Tuesday, handing out a file entitled "12 falsehoods about Spain" to refute common separatist claims such as the lack of impartiality of all judges.

"These people aren’t there (on trial) because of what they think but because of what they did," said Jorge Notivoli Marin, Spain’s charge d’affaires in Brussels. "It’s very important for us to show that we’re a country that has nothing to hide, that follows the law and procedure." Many Spaniards support the trial, shocked by the actions of Catalonia’s regional executive in October 2017.

But separatists in Catalonia have dismissed the trial as a politically-motivated "farce". Protests have been called for in Barcelona, the Catalan capital, at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT).

Carles Puigdemont, Catalonia’s former president who fled Spain days after the independence declaration on October 27, is not among the defendants. Spain does not try suspects in absentia for major offences. Speaking from Berlin, Puigdemont said the trial was a "stress test for Spanish democracy".

He called on the international community for help, asking the European Union why it was more concerned with Venezuela than Madrid. In his absence, the trial’s main protagonist is his former deputy Junqueras, who opted to remain in Spain.

The 11 other defendants include members of Catalonia’s former executive, the two leaders of powerful pro-independence associations, ANC and Omnium Cultural, and the former president of the Catalan parliament. They could face jail terms of seven to 17 years. The nine defendants charged with rebellion have been in pre-trial detention for months, some of them for more than a year. </s> Llius Gene, AFP | Supporters of Catalan Independence demonstrate in Catalonia to demand the liberation of 12 jailed separatists on February 1, 2019.

As 12 Catalan separatist leaders prepare to go on trial in Madrid, Spain has been forced to defend the independence and impartiality of its courts.

Catalan separatists have dismissed the high-profile trial which begins Tuesday at Spain’s Supreme Court as a “farce” whose outcome is already pre-determined.

Not so, says the government, which has published a thick file to show Spain’s justice system is just as fair as its European counterparts, citing rankings by the European Commission, the European Court of Human Rights and Transparency International.

Supreme Court President Carlos Lesmes points out that if the justice system really was not independent, the king’s brother-in-law would not be in jail for corruption, nor would a court ruling have sparked a no-confidence motion that brought down the conservative government in June.

“I think this will be the most important trial we’ve had in democracy,” he told reporters before the start of the trial.

“It’s a challenge because there’s been a big smear campaign of Spain’s judiciary.”

Spain has had a long-standing public perception that its judiciary is biased.

In the EU’s 2018 “Justice Scoreboard”, Spain came sixth to last among 28 member states for public perception of the independence of judges and courts, behind Poland and Hungary.

Despite repeated denials, the conservative government in power at the time of Catalonia’s attempt to break from Spain in October 2017 and the Socialists that took power in June have each been accused of exerting pressure on judges.

“It is the state which will end up in the dock,” one of the main defendants on trial, former Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras, predicted from pre-trial detention.

Junqueras and 11 others are on trial for their role in the attempt to break from Spain.

Separatists call them “political prisoners” who are suffering oppression of the kind experienced in Spain during Francisco Franco’s 1939-75 dictatorship.

In a ruling, Spain’s Supreme Court said the group were not on trial for their ideas.

The majority of the defendants were “political leaders who were members of the government of an autonomous region and therefore the highest representatives of the (Spanish) state in Catalonia”, it said.

The government has also had to defend itself from accusations that it put pressure on judges during the criminal investigation phase.

Public prosecutors accuse nine of the 12 of rebellion, which implies the use of violence a key charge which has divided Spanish legal experts.

But the state attorney decided in November to only accuse them of the lesser crime of sedition.

This has led conservative opposition parties, which take a hard line against Catalan separatism, to accuse the government of “unacceptable interference” in the case.

They suspect the move was part of a bid by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority government to win the much-needed support in parliament of Catalan separatist parties for its 2019 budget.

Justice Minister Dolores Delgado, though, said Spain’s new state attorney took the decision “without the government imposing anything”.

In November, a conservative senator, Ignacio Cosido, also contributed to perception that the judiciary is biased.

On WhatsApp, he welcomed the promotion of Manuel Marchena a judge seen as close to the conservatives who will be presiding at the separatists’ trial at the head of the Supreme Court.

Cosido said it would allow the conservatives to “control” the court “behind the scenes.”

After the controversy this generated, Marchena gave up the promotion.

Courts in Belgium, Germany and Switzerland have also contributed to doubts about Spain’s legal system by refusing to extradite separatists who had escaped after the declaration of independence.

A German court for instance last year refused to send former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont back to Spain on rebellion charges.

A Belgian court meanwhile has agreed to consider a civil lawsuit filed by Puigdemont’s lawyers against Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena, accusing him of [lacking] impartiality in the case against the Catalan separatist leaders.

Spain has not publicly criticised these decisions.

“Our best communication campaign will be the trial,” said Lesmes.
The trial of Catalonia independence leaders starts at the Spanish Supreme Court.