The Supreme Court has done it again. He has once again violated popular sovereignty. Once again he has decided that his will is more valuable than that of the people, expressed – as the Constitution says – in law. The judges of our highest court have once again left the question of whether democracy is possible in Spain in the dark.
The technical explanation for what they did is simple, although the right-wing media and the judiciary will try to convince us otherwise in the coming days. The Amnesty Law states that crimes of embezzlement will not be amnestied if there is enrichment. To clarify this concept, the law itself specifies that the application of public funds for pro-independence purposes will not be considered enrichment “when, regardless of its adaptation to the legal system, it has not been intended to obtain a personal advantage of a financial nature.” The rule is clear. Crystalline. It may seem better or worse to us, we may agree or disagree with what it says, but there is no doubt about it: if public money was used for the October 1 referendum without the intention of obtaining a personal financial advantage, that is, without the willingness to keep money for oneself, the crime must be amnestied.