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| The Supreme Court. Photograph by F.D.V. |
A political trial, by Suso de Toro
The Supreme Court of the Kingdom of Span is to judge a group
of men and women who have neither robbed nor hurt nor killed anyone. They are all
peaceful persons; yet the Spanish Justice detained, handcuffed and put them away
in cells, where they have been kept for over a year. The actions they are to be
tried for are related to their exercising political freedoms and their freedom
of expression. They are all outstanding community representatives and leaders,
democratically-elected by the Catalan voters. For the same reason, the Justice
system tried to arrest other Catalan politicians abroad.
There is no doubt this is a political issue and it is
therefore a political hearing. The charges are extremely serious. It is a very serious
political trial. As political trials go, this one is the elephant in the room.
The ultimate goal for this situation to occur is a plan: to put
an end to Catalan nationalism. However, its inevitable outcome is the self-portrait
the Spanish State painted of itself, appearing on the world stage as a State
that persecutes democratic freedoms, as the successor of the Francoist regime.
No, it is not true that Catalan nationalism has awakened
Francoist nationalism; Catalans are not to blame. No, it is not true that the dreadful
current image of Spain in the world is the fault of those treacherous Catalans. What was known as "sociological
Francoism" had political ingredients: all it was needed was for someone to
decide to stir the pot and take the lead.
Specifically, the conflict began when M. Rajoy’s People’s
Party gathered 4.2 million signatures against the Catalans’ Statute and the
appeal lodged before the Constitutional Court against it. The central government
and the State’s institutions have wielded maximum power in such a conflict, as
they’ve shown in spades, and were mainly responsible for taking an artificially-created
political conflict to the current situation. It is the State and the economic
powers who have chosen to have these persons treated in such a way. Humiliation,
the sadism of power.
Because this State’s policy of refusing to engage in a dialogue,
so as to corner the opposition and persecute them harshly, has involved either
actively or passively every Spanish political party and every state institution,
starting with the King. It is this policy that lays the charges against and keeps
these persons in jail. The nature of this post-Francoist State is unabashedly apparent,
and it is expressed through the indictment: the national Prosecutor’s Office,
the State’s Legal Counsel and Vox. The ideological elements of the charges are very
obvious, as is the ideology of the Deep State.
What is frightful is not that the State behaves as per its
nature, but that there is no democratic response from the population. It is
probably too late.
The original text in Spanish can be found here.
