The Spanish Senate approved changes to the Penal Code on Wednesday that benefit Catalan separatists already convicted or still with ongoing legal proceedings, such as former regional president Carles Puigdemont, who lives in Belgium to escape accusations from the Spanish justice system.
The reforms, which had been approved in Congress (lower house of the Cortes, Spanish Parliament) put an end to the crime of sedition and modify the crime of embezzlement (appropriation or embezzlement of public funds), which led to the conviction of nine leaders of Catalonia involved in the region’s self-determination attempt in 2017.
Dozens of other Catalans are accused of these crimes, awaiting trial or, as happened with Puigdemont, fleeing from justice abroad.
Those who have already been tried have been sentenced to prison terms and disqualified from holding public office for several years.
The accusation and conviction for embezzlement is due to the use of public funds to organize the self-determination referendum of Catalonia, on October 1, 2017, which the Constitutional Court had declared illegal.
With the changes to the Penal Code ratified today, all those already convicted or accused can see the sentences that have been applied or will be applied to them reduced, allowing, for example, a prompt return to political life, as candidacies in the next regional elections. elections.
With the end of the crime of sedition, the independentistas would be subject, according to the jurists and the Spanish Government, to the crime of “aggravated public disorder”.
If the sedition provided for prison sentences of up to 15 years, that of “aggravated public disorder” establishes a maximum of five years, further lightening the penalties related to the prohibition to hold public office.
In the case of embezzlement, Spanish legislation now distinguishes between the diversion of public money for personal benefit and for other purposes, and it would be in this last type, with lighter penalties, where the case of the independentistas would be framed.
The penalties applicable to embezzlement without personal enrichment are from one to four years in prison and from two to six years of impediment to hold public office. In the Criminal Code still in force, the minimum sentences are six years and the maximum can reach 20 years, in both cases.
None of the nine courts is already in prison, because the Spanish government, headed by the socialist Pedro Sánchez, granted them pardon in 2019.
Without an absolute majority of support in the national parliament, Sánchez has been counting on the Catalan separatists (and also the Basques, in addition to other minor formations) to approve laws such as the General State Budget and these ratified changes in the Penal Code for the Senate today.
Sánchez himself acknowledged that it is a “risky” reform of the Penal Code, but added that it is the only way to end the tension in Catalonia and remove the political conflict from justice.
Sánchez has defended that this path has given good results and that, since he took office in 2018, the Catalan independence movement is divided, there is dialogue between national and regional institutions and the Catalan executive has stopped defending itself and a unilateral self-defense project. determination of Catalonia.
The Spanish government (coalition of socialists and the extreme left platform Unidas Podemos) has also stressed that an alignment of the legislation with that of other countries is at stake and stresses that the criminalization of sedition in the Penal Code has been the argument used by Belgium or Germany in order not to extradite Puigdemont.
The right, on the other hand, accuses the Socialists of negotiating their own sentences with “criminals” only in exchange for guaranteeing “the seat of power.”
He directly accuses the Socialists of having violated parliamentary procedures to introduce these changes in law in a few days, without debate and preventing opinions or hearings, and warns that several convicted of corruption in Spain may see their sentences reduced when the new Penal Code enters in force.
The parties in the Government and those that support it in parliament (which form an absolute majority in Congress and the Senate) had ‘adhered’ to this reform of the Penal Code “modifications” to the organic laws of the Constitutional Court (TC) and the General Council of the Judiciary, to change the way in which the judges of the two bodies are chosen, resorting to a mechanism provided for in the regiment of the Spanish Cortes that is used frequently, although it is considered an “abusive” of the rules.
At the request of the Popular Party (PP, right), the TC decided this week to take precautionary measures and today prevented the voting of these amendments in the Senate, in an unprecedented decision in Spanish democracy to interfere in the legislative power.
The TC plenary decision opened an “unprecedented institutional crisis” in Spain in 44 years of democracy, according to the president of the Senate, Ander Gil (PSOE).
Source: TSF
