Spain opens ‘street terrorism’ probe into Catalan leader

MADRID: Spain’s top court said on Thursday it was opening an investigation into Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont on “terrorism” charges over protests linked to Catalonia’s failed 2017 independence bid. The Supreme Court said it had decided “to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute” Puigdemont “for terrorism offences in relation to the Democratic Tsunami case”. Democratic Tsunami is a secretive Catalan group that spearheaded a string of protests after Spain jailed 13 pro-independence leaders, two years after their botched bid to separate the rich northeastern region from Spain.

Led by Puigdemont, who was Catalan regional leader at the time, the failed independence bid sparked Spain’s worst political crisis in decades. Although Puigdemont fled Spain to avoid prosecution, his fellow leaders were put on trial and on the day their sentence was handed down in October 2019, thousands of activists blocked access to Barcelona airport for several hours.

The unprecedented protest prompted the cancellation of more than 100 flights and 115 people were injured during clashes between police and protesters. In its decision, the court referred to the crime of “street terrorism”. The aim, it said, was to “undermine law and order, to seriously breach the peace, to cause serious harm to the functioning of an international organization or to cause a sense of terror within the population or part of it”.

There was “evidence pointing to Carles Puigdemont’s participation in the events under investigation”, it added, citing his involvement in the group’s creation “to subvert law and order and to seriously destabilize democratic institutions”.