-
The former president has been sentenced to 15 months of disqualification for a crime of disobedience
The former president of the Generalitat, Quim Torra, has been sentenced to 15 months of disqualification and one 8 month fine with a daily fee of 100 euros for a crime of disobedience, by refusing to remove a banner in favor of imprisoned independence leaders from the balcony of the Palau de la Generalitat in September 2019 and ignoring an order from the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC). It is the second time that the former president is tried for not removing a banner in support of imprisoned politicians. He will also have to pay the court costs. The first time it cost him his job.
In September 2020, the Supreme Court confirmed a sentence of one and a half years disqualification and fine of 30,000 euros for not removing one, despite the fact that the Central Electoral Board had ordered it to guarantee the neutrality of public buildings during the April 2019 campaign.
Violation of freedom of expression
This second sentence refers to events that date back to September 19, 2019. The judge then issued an order in which he accepted the precautionary measure requested by Citizen Impulse for Torra to withdraw the banner that read: “Freedom of political prisoners and exiles”, in Catalan and English and with a yellow ribbon.
Despite that order, the then ‘president’ responded once again with a challenge. On September 20, 2019, the TSJC gave him 48 hours to remove the poster. Far from obeying, Torra denounced a “flagrant violation of the right to freedom of expression.”
Related news
In the sentence, the magistrate now considers that is proven that the accused did not comply with the court decision removal of the banner from the facade of the Palau de la Generalitat in September 2019 and that: “the facts of the accused cannot be understood as protected by the legitimate exercise of the alleged fundamental rights or parliamentary inviolability, not being able to appreciate the concurrence of the acquittal excuse of article 410.2 of the Penal Code”
The answer, another banner
In the end, on September 27, the term has expiredthe judges ordered the Mossos to remove the banner, after which two workers from the Generalitat removed the message from the palace balcony. The Government, however, responded with a new challenge: it hung another banner with the slogan ‘Freedom of opinion and expression. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. LThe Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office claims a year and eight months of disqualification and a fine of 30,000 euros for Torra.