Catalan separatists face bail hearing
Tensions rise ahead of poll as court decides if rebel politicians will be released from custody to campaign
LEADING Catalan pro-independence politicians will learn today whether they will be released from custody to campaign in Catalonia’s forthcoming elections, amid signs of rising tension ahead of the crucial Dec 21 vote.
Judge Pablo Llarena, of the Supreme Court, will decide today whether to allow eight members of the Catalan administration and two pro-independence activists to leave custody on bail while they are investigated for alleged crimes of rebellion and sedition.
At the same time, Catalonia’s deposed president, Carles Puigdemont, will attend a hearing in Brussels to decide on his extradition from Belgium, where he fled to avoid arrest along with four other members of his former administration.
The decisions are likely to further inflame tensions on the streets of Catalonia. In Barcelona on Saturday, far-right demonstrators stood off with activists from the hardline pro-independence CUP outside the party’s headquarters, exchanging the insults of “fascists” and “traitors” that have become common currency in the crisis. The organisers of the protest, Democracia Nacional, urged Spanish nationalists to take the streets to send a message to secessionists that “if they betray Spain and its people they will pay dearly”.
Police in Catalonia are investigating what appeared to be the simulated lynching of pro-union candidates after seven life-size dummies were hung by their feet from a motorway bridge outside Barcelona bearing the logos of anti-independence parties next to a scrawled message demanding “Liberty for the political prisoners”. The apparent intimidation of pro-union forces drew outrage from political leaders as they prepared to launch their campaigns for the elections that will determine the path of the independence crisis.
Xavier Garcia Albiol, the candidate for prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative Popular Party, said “the level of hate of some independence supporters reminds us of the mafioso ways of the Medellin Cartel”.
According to the newspaper El Pais, Spain’s interior ministry is to send 50 extra police personnel to act as bodyguards for pro-union candidates amid brewing bitterness in Spain’s richest autonomous community ahead of the vote.
Ordered by the central government as it implemented direct rule after Catalonia’s October declaration of independence, the elections will either bring the secessionists’ march to a halt or propel their stand-off with Madrid to vertiginous heights.
Referring to the unlawful referendum on independence held on Oct 1, which led to the crisis in Catalonia, Mr Puigdemont told his supporters on Saturday that they must “persist” on the “only way forward” to independence. “Let’s go into Dec 21 like the second round of October 1, to achieve another victory for the democratic and pacific path,” Mr Puigdemont told a rally of his Junts per Catalunya candidacy list via a big screen from Belgium.
Oriol Junqueras, Mr Puigdemont’s former vice-president, who is among the 10 Catalan politicians and activists imprisoned in the Madrid region, called on the European Union to monitor the election being organised by the Spanish government in order to “erase any doubts about the outcome”.
“It is hard to believe that Spain’s conservative Popular Party government will actually respect the result of these elections,” Mr Junqueras wrote in a letter published by Politico.
‘The level of hate of some independence supporters reminds us of the mafioso ways of the Medellin Cartel’