Torra will not go to trial for not removing a second banner: “I will not legitimize a new farce”


  • The prosecutor claims for the former head of the Catalan Executive a year and eight months of disqualification and a fine for a crime of disobedience

The former president of the Generalitat Quim Torra will not attend to the second trial that he faces this Thursday for an alleged crime of disobedience for not removing a banner that called for the freedom of the prisoners of 1-O and wore a yellow ribbon, and which was hung on the facade of the Palau de la Generalitat in September 2019: “I will not legitimize a new farce.”

Torra has said that he is asking international courts for protection: “I do not recognize the legitimacy of Spanish justice, which does not respect international treaties or fundamental rights.”

The prosecution claims the former head of the Catalan Executive for one year and eight months of disqualification and a fine of 30,000 euros. It is the second time that the former president is tried for not removing a banner in support of imprisoned politicians. The first time it cost him his job. In September 2020, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of one and a half years of disqualification and a 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 campaign. April 2019.

In the new indictment, the prosecution maintains that on September 19, 2019, the TSJC issued an order in which it accepted the precautionary measure requested by Impulso Ciudadano for Torra to remove 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.”

“defiant” attitude

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“Despite the clarity of the injunction, the defendant, as he had already ostentatiously and defiantly anticipated” in a press release, “refused to comply” with this order “in a clearly reluctant and obstructionist manner”, public accusation affects. Thus, on September 27, after the deadline had expired, the judges ordered the Mossos to remove the banner, after which two workers from the Generalitat removed the message from the balcony of the Palau at around 3:30 p.m. The Government, however, responded with a new challenge: at 6:00 p.m., it hung another banner with the slogan ‘Freedom of opinion and expression. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’.

Torrra refused to testify before the TSJC judge investigating the case. In a brief appearance, he assured that he felt like a victim of the “repression” of the independence movement and that he should return to his responsibility as soon as possible to stop the pandemic. “I have told the magistrate that this was not a neutral court, that whatever he said, the sentence is already written, and that I accepted my right not to testify. I have told him that I am a Catalan separatist and that the trial will be framed in the political persecution against the Catalan separatists, the cause of the independence movement is just and it is a cause of a national minority”, he underlined.



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