When it comes to Catalonia and the Catalan people's human right to self-determination, Spain is not a constitutional state, but shows the ugly face of a deeply partisan, politicised, right-wing and Catalanophobic judiciary that violates elementary principles of the rule of law, organic law of the Spanish state, Spanish fundamental rights and human rights.
Outside Spain, however, the separation of powers and the judiciary of other countries of the European Union function well, which is why the Spanish judiciary - as well as the judges of the highest courts and the public prosecutors - has been making a fool of itself worldwide for years by using obviously politically motivated European arrest warrants to arrest and extradite Catalans who are being persecuted by the judiciary in Spain for political reasons.
It is surprising that organs of the European Union accuse member states such as Hungary and Poland of lacking the rule of law, but do not criticise the country that has been trampling on the rule of law for years, brutally repressing national minorities and carrying out unprecedented, illegal repression in the European Union, especially against the Catalan nation, even in breach of its own organic law, which dissolved a democratically elected parliament without sufficient legal basis, unlawfully deposed a government, and not only the deposed ministers and the president, but even the president of parliament, who had been declared deposed, were prosecuted in a vile manner with the means of an obviously politicised judiciary, and political prisoners in Madrid were sentenced to long prison terms in show trials, without any actual legal accusation being derivable from the Spanish penal code.
Even though the political prisoners have been released in the meantime, after the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation had correctly pointed out the existence of political prisoners in the European Union, namely in Spain, to the foreign representative of the European Union in front of the running cameras of the world public, and was able to base this on last-instance decisions of the judiciary of European countries and the United Nations, they have still not been rehabilitated and are threatened with renewed imprisonment because of an ongoing trial.
While the European Union, with a hypocrisy that can hardly be surpassed, criticises Poland, Hungary and Russia, but persistently remains silent on the massive violations of fundamental and human rights that Spain has committed and continues to commit against the Catalan people, but also against Basques and others, and continues the decades-long oppression and persecution of the Catalan people with the objective, as obvious as it is unlawful, of eradicating their national identity and making it impossible for the Catalan people to be rehabilitated, the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Justice, the judiciaries of other European countries and the competent organs of the United Nations speak clearly and defend the fundamental and human rights of Catalans persecuted by Spain for political reasons.
There have been many judgments in which judges from other countries, as well as the United Nations Working Group against Arbitrary Detention, have defended the rights of Catalans persecuted by Spain for political reasons, and these have been reported in detail in the pages of this petition. Two noteworthy recent events are highlighted here:
1.) In November 2014, the Catalan government at the time, under the presidency of Artur Mas, wanted to hold a consultative referendum without direct legal effects on the political future of Catalonia. This referendum was neither prohibited by the Spanish Penal Code nor by other laws of the Spanish legal system, but rather covered by mandatory United Nations law and also the Spanish Constitution. The two questions were to be:
- "Do you want Catalonia to become a separate state?"
- "If so, do you want this state to be independent?"
Through the Spanish "Constitutional Court", which has legislative, executive and juridical powers in violation of the principle of separation of powers, without the European Union being bothered so far, the then right-wing conservative Spanish government had this non-binding referendum prohibited. Therefore, on 9 November 2014, the Catalan government held an alternative referendum with the same ballots, which was likewise not prohibited by any Spanish law, but covered by the Spanish legal system. Over 80 per cent of the votes cast agreed to both questions. As late as November 2014, Spain began the legal prosecution of all those responsible, with the clear aim of damaging them economically and in some cases driving them to ruin. The show trials for alleged disobedience, bending of the law, usurpation of office as well as misappropriation of public funds (by which Spain understands, for example, the use of public buildings without paying rent to the state for referendums that an elected regional government has conducted) against Artur Mas and ministers of his government provisionally ended in 2017 with sentences of the Catalan politicians to fines and a ban of several years from holding public office.
Seven years later, in September 2021, former Catalan minister Francesc Homs, one of those prosecuted on political grounds by the Spanish judiciary for 9 November 2014, was the first of the aggrieved parties to lodge an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights against his conviction by the Spanish Supreme Court. He made this announcement before the European Parliament in Brussels on 9 November 2021 in the presence of Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan president in exile who was also persecuted by Spain for political reasons. Homs opposes the violation of his fundamental rights, the apparent arbitrariness of the Spanish Supreme Court in his trial, the retroactive effect of new criminal law norms established by the Spanish Constitutional Court with its also legislative power at the time, and the recognisably politicised jurisprudence of the Spanish "Constitutional Court". The exercise of his fundamental and human rights guaranteed by the Spanish constitution resulted in Homs being deprived of the right to stand for election for one and a half years and a fine of 30,000 euros.
https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/homs-tribunal-estrasburg-9-n/
In December 2021, the European Court of Human Rights informed Catalan Jordi Turull, the Catalan minister deposed by Spain, and Jordi Cuixart, the president of Òmnium Cultural, both of whom had been imprisoned as political prisoners in Spain for several years, in Catalan what the next steps would be in the cases they had brought against Spain.
Also in December 2021, the European Court of Human Rights - also in Catalan - informed Francesc Homs that it would consider together the treatment of the complaints concerning Spain's judicial response to the referendum of 9 November 2014 and the independence referendum of 1 October 2017. This suggests that Spain is likely to suffer another legal defeat in Strasbourg.
2.) On 28 December 2021, the Belgian judiciary clearly rejected the Spanish attempt to restrict the freedom of expression of a Mallorcan rap singer singing in Catalan with a prison sentence of several years and rejected the extradition of "Valtònyc" to Spain, which had once again tried to abuse the instrument of the European Arrest Warrant. However, the Belgian prosecution filed a final appeal, which will be heard on 11 January 2022. The fact that in Spain a not insignificant number of cultural workers are in prison or have been sentenced to fines in order to effectively restrict the human right to freedom of expression is a disgrace for the European Union, which - in contrast to the Council of Europe - tacitly tolerates this. "Valtònyc", who, like Carles Puigdemont, is now allowed to move freely in almost every country of the European Union, but would only have to expect immediate arrest in Spain, has once again shown the world how bad the Spanish justice system is. All those who pillory Poland and Hungary but remain silent about the blatant legal abuses in Spain must be called hypocritical and conscienceless!
Meanwhile, Spanish politics and justice continue to pursue their long-standing goal of repressing and suppressing the Catalan language at all levels. And Europe, which should have learned its lesson from the persecutions of minorities at the time of National Socialism, Europe, which always pretends to defend human rights, Europe remains silent and agrees!