Five years have passed since the trial against the trials in the Supreme Court and Manuel Marchena no longer sees things in the same way. What was once a chimera or a daydream in which violence did not play an essential role for the President of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, who presided over the trial, is now punctuated by violent elements and flying 'vowels'. The verdict did not condemn those accused of rebellion, but of sedition. The text on the car states that raises a question of unconstitutionality against the amnesty law that exists multiple references to the “coup plotters”, in line with the complaints that have since been filed by the Partido Popular and Vox. Marchena changed the script and adapted it to the needs of those who claimed that a coup had taken place.
The 2019 ruling was largely defined by the use of the word ‘reverie’ to describe the failed attempt to provoke Catalonia’s independence from the Junts and Esquerra government. The great paradox is that it was Marchena who coined that term with the intention of uniting the different opinions that were being debated in court. The aim was to achieve unanimity in the verdict, without dissenting individual voices, which would give it more legal force in the face of future appeals. Luciano Varela put forward the idea that everything had been a fraud, while another magistrate, Andrés Martínez Arrieta, disagreed with that definition.
It ended up being a daydream. The verdict admitted that the independence process had no chance of success. The convicted politicians “were aware that what was offered to Catalan citizens as the legitimate exercise of the 'right to decide' was not but the bait for a mobilization that would never lead in the establishment of a sovereign state.”
Varela explained it informally in a subsequent interview in El Mundo in 2020: “Let's see, Can you imagine a coup? in which they take a page from the BOE (the application of article 155 of the Constitution) and everything ends? Calling this a rebellion is a disproportion that trivializes what Milans del Bosch and Tejero did. It is a purely criminal act that only fits into the type of sedition, and in no way into that of rebellion. “Which rebels were they?”
The “BOE sheet” that ends an alleged coup is mentioned this way in the sentence: “The plot was finally aborted by merely showing a few pages.”
As for the use of violence, the verdict was clear. The violent incidents that took place were just that, incidents, and not the key element of a conspiracy. “Violence must be instrumental, functional violence, directly predetermined, without intermediate steps, with a view to the ends that animate the rebels’ action.” And so a conviction for rebellion was ruled out, that is, that a coup d’état had taken place.
Violence has flared up again this week in the eyes of the Supreme Court, coupled with the multiple references to a coup d'état that were not in the original verdict. The convicts “not only committed crimes, but were also motivated by the aim of completing a coup d'état.” “Free and democratic coexistence was seriously disrupted in Spain as a result of an attempted coup d'état, which fortunately was not successful.” The response of the democrats was not reduced to that of the aggressors of the rule of law, because they trusted in the functioning of democratic institutions. “They, in turn, did not decide to ignore the legal system and respond to cobblestones with cobblestones.”
In its opposition to the amnesty, the Supreme Court attaches great importance to independence propaganda. “We will do it again,” some leaders have said. They intend to communicate to their followers that they are not defeated and that they can get back on track at any time, no one knows how.
The results in the last general and regional elections were worse than in the previous ones. Esquerra suffered a real flood of votes. In the regional elections in May, the Junts got 21% of the votes. This is according to the latest CEO survey the rejection of independence is at historic highs (since this question was asked in 2015). 53% are against secession, compared to 40% who want it.
Reality is not as important to the Supreme Court as what the leaders of Junts and ERC say, contrary to what was claimed in the 2019 ruling. Not only do they not ask for forgiveness, but “they proclaim that they will not accept any forgiveness that they have accepted simply defeated and, as they repeat emphatically, they threaten to do it again”, it is now said.
Five years ago, they didn't attach so much importance to these kinds of statements. “There is no regret whatsoever. “Everything I did, I would do again,” Jordi Cuixart warned on the last day of the trial, in which the defendant had the right to address the court. Marchena and the other magistrates did not feel very conditioned by these words when drawing up the verdict.
The 2024 decision highlights the gravity of the events of 2017, when an attempt was made to “change the democratic constitutional order through events.” The sentence of the trial was intended to adapt to the real facts. Faced with the plea of the prosecutors, who came to claim that “on October 27, independence was accomplished in Catalonia and the Constitution was revoked in the territory,” as Fidel Cadena stated, the Supreme Court did not get carried away by the level of hysteria common in the right-wing press, as happened again with the amnesty law.
“The state maintained control over violence, the army, the police, the jurisdiction and even social power at all times. And it maintained this, making the ultimate goal of independence a mere chimera,” the ruling said.
Luciano Varela already said it in the interview: “At no point was there the possibility that Catalonia would stop being a Spanish state. Neither with what they had done, nor with what they were planning to do.” One page of the BOE and everything fell apart. Now Marchena has built an alternative reality and discovered the coup. Retroactively.
With the decision announced this Wednesday, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court ignores the proven facts of the 2019 ruling, written by the same chamber under the chairmanship of the same magistrate. Anyone would think that there is a judicial elite willing to change its principles in favor of its ideological interests, and that this leads them to use the word “coup plotters” nine times on this occasion, as if it had suddenly appeared to them in the middle of a revelation, inspired by the Almighty. And in the order they clearly contain political considerations, such as criticizing the government for agreeing to the amnesty in exchange for the parliamentary support of a small number of deputies, thus tracing the argument of the Popular Party.
Fortunately, the right-wing has been telling us for some time now that its sole purpose is to guarantee the independence of the judiciary.