On 21 June 2021, despite all objections from Spain, the Council of Europe adopted by 70 votes to 28 with 12 abstentions a report on the actions of the Spanish judiciary against leaders of the Catalan independence movement, calling for the withdrawal of all European arrest warrants against Catalan politicians currently in exile and the pardon or release of the nine Catalans imprisoned in Spain. The amendments of the Spanish Socialists (PSOE) and Conservatives (PP) were rejected in turn.
It should also be recalled here that the European Court of Justice has provisionally annulled the decision, taken at Spain's request by a majority of the European Parliament in one of its darkest hours, to lift the parliamentary immunity of the three MEPs Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Prof. Dr. Clara Ponsatí, but Spain, as a Member State of the European Union, nevertheless continues to maintain national arrest warrants against the three MEPs, thus making it impossible for them to visit their constituencies in the course of their parliamentary work.
The Council of Europe also calls on Spain to redefine the offences of riot and sedition in the Spanish Penal Code, and in particular to define the concept of sedition more narrowly than at present, in order to exclude in future inappropriate penalties for non-violent transgressions.
Spain is also called upon to refrain from prosecuting expressions of solidarity and symbolic acts. This includes the case of former Catalan President Quim Torra, who was removed from office because he exercised his right to freedom of expression and put up a poster reading «Freedom for the political prisoners».
In the debate, Latvian rapporteur Boriss Cilevičs described the prison sentences imposed by the Spanish Supreme Court as clearly inappropriately high; he also pointed out that the element of violence required by the law had been lacking. He further stated that the judicial persecution of thousands of Catalans did not reflect a living democracy. He compared Spain with Turkey in that both countries sentenced politicians to long prison terms.
https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/consell-europa-informe-espanya-repressio/
The Spanish central government was aware that this report, which was extremely unfavourable to Spain's international reputation, had been submitted to the Council of Europe and would be determined by a Council of Europe vote on 21 June 2021. It reacted with an announcement by the Spanish Prime Minister Pablo Sánchez in the Liceu in Barcelona on the same 21 June 2021, which had already been sharply criticised by the Spanish conservatives and neo-fascists as well as by the Spanish Supreme Court, that he would present his proposal to pardon the political prisoners to the Council of Ministers the following day.
For the Catalans, who were objectively sentenced unjustly, without any legal basis and, moreover, unlawfully in only one instance, a pardon is the smallest possible concession by the Spanish state, which in itself would have to annul the sentences, adequately compensate the political prisoners for their arbitrary imprisonment over several years and initiate criminal investigations against all the public prosecutors and judges who were responsible for the clearly legally abusive sentencing of the Catalans. This was also demanded by the competent body of the United Nations Human Rights Council, among others. The political shabbiness of reacting to obvious injustices committed in the name of the Spanish state with pardons only under pressure from the Council of Europe, instead of coming to terms with them and annulling them, will further damage the far from good international reputation of the Spanish state and further deepen the conflict between Spain and Catalonia.
If the Spanish state follows the Council of Europe's call and changes its criminal law in line with the European Convention on Human Rights and the European legal standard, it will lose its most effective weapon to deny the Catalan people the free exercise of their human right to self-determination, guaranteed by international law as well as by the Spanish constitution. It remains to be seen how Spain will decide on this key issue! In any case, the announced pardon is not an «offer of reconciliation», but a minimal reaction to international pressure to which Spain is increasingly exposed, and the forthcoming judgements of the European Court of Human Rights, which are widely expected to be devastating for Spain.
While the European Union continues to pretend that the legal persecution of now thousands of Catalans for political reasons is an 'internal affair' of Spain and thus displays an exemplary double standard with regard to human rights, the Council of Europe has shown on 21 June 2021 that at least it cares about the defence of human rights and reacts with equal measure to violations of human rights inside and outside Europe.