State Attorney General vows to use ‘criminal courts’ to fight independence process ‘if necessary’

Article published at Diari Ara, 7th September 2016

Our opinion:

It is “criminal” in Spain to vote on a referendum, to research it in the parliament or to officially poll the people’s opinion. The Catalans are still forbidden to have the right to decide their own future. The 300 plus year struggle for respect, dignity, “true” autonomy and democracy continues in Spain for the Catalan people. If Spain disrespects and blames the Catalans for all things wrong, let them be free to be on their own. Spanish politicians will have no more scapegoat to redirect their ineptitude or corruption scandalS and the Catalans will have their own country once again.

Article: 

Madrigal warns against the pro-independence movement’s ‘total contempt’ for the Constitution. Meanwhile, Munté criticises those who seek to use the law as a ‘gag’.

Once more, the Catalan independence process featured in some of the speeches made during the solemn opening ceremony marking the start of the judicial year held at the Madrid Supreme Court and presided over by King Felipe. The State Attorney General, Consuelo Madrigal, concluded her address by warning the king of the ‘total disregard for constitutional order’ by certain sectors of the Catalan independence movement. During her speech, Madrigal -who took office last year- also warned of the ‘demagoguery’ of some Catalan politicians. She claimed that they ‘invoke the concept of freedom’ with no regard for the law and warned that ‘certain uses of freedom can pose a danger to democracy. It is not freedom which frees the people, but the law’, she declared.

Consequently, Madrigal brandished the Constitutional Court’s ruling of 2 December 2015 which declared [the Catalan] Parliament’s breakaway declaration unconstitutional and void, while emphasising that the State Attorney General would always act with this in mind since, ‘in a democratic vision of power, there is no other legitimacy than that which is provided by the law.’

Madrigal went on to say that ‘in an uncertain political and social context such as the one we are currently experiencing, and faced with the challenge to the rule of law and the total contempt for constitutional order by pro-independence circles, we ought to maintain the integrity of our intellectual awareness, as did the Constitutional Court in its ruling of 2 December 2015’.

Madrigal referred to the ruling in order to reassure those present, ‘the attorney general has acted and will continue to act before the Constitutional Court and before the criminal courts, if necessary.’

Lesmes: ‘Justice has not been politicized’

Read the full article here.