Belgium, Switzerland, now the UK…

The public prosecutor who filed rebellion and sedition charges against the Catalan government has chosen not to issue a European arrest warrant against former Catalan minister Clara Ponsatí, following the news last weekend that she had moved from Belgium back to Scotland to take up her former position as professor of economics at St. Andrews. The decision speaks volumes.

When the Catalan government turned up in Brussels, Spain’s Audiencia Nacional issued a European arrest warrant against them, but dropped it as soon as it became apparent that a Belgian court of law would likely dismiss it. When former CUP MP Anna Gabriel showed up in Switzerland, the prosecutor requested that the warrant be reactivated, but the Spanish judge refused to, as the Swiss had already warned that they regarded the issue as a case of political persecution and Spain’s warrant stood no chance of succeeding.

Now, in Clara Ponsatí’s case, the prosecutor won’t even dare to suggest an arrest warrant. The official reason is that they will issue one as soon as the charges have been formally pressed; but that is merely an excuse. Rather, it seems as if Spain’s justice system has had a reality check.

The truth is that Spain’s peculiar justice system lies outside Europe’s legal framework. Specifically, in the case of the UK the parliament’s legislative committee advised the chamber to abolish the crimes of rebellion and sedition in 1977 because it saw them as “medieval” offences that had no place in a 20th century democratic society. In fact, both crimes were first recorded in a bill passed in 1572 and were abolished for good in 2009.

It is worth remembering, now that a few months have passed, that the first reaction of the Spanish government —and especially of the unionist media— when the Catalan leaders went into exile was to claim that they would be handed over to the Spanish authorities without delay so that they could be jailed. Newspapers such as Madrid daily El País published articles eagerly outlining the parallels between Spain’s and Belgium’s justice system, claiming —beyond any doubt— that the Catalan leaders would only get to stay in Brussels for a few days.

I do not know if they realised what they were writing, but nowadays, with Catalan exiles in Belgium, Switzerland and the UK who have travelled to Denmark, The Netherlands and Luxembourg, things are looking different and it seems as if it is Spain that is becoming increasingly isolated. So much so, it is not even bothering to convince its allies anymore, which vindicates the Catalan government’s decision to move to Brussels. Rajoy desperately needs to prove to his European partners that the situation is normal, but the individual reactions of the countries involved clearly show that they do not regard the events in Spain as normal. Indeed, they are not. At least not in a democracy, of course …