Esquerra spokesperson Marta Vilalta recalls that the Spanish state “has, through its Court of Auditors, built a misrepresented case” against the foreign policy of the Catalan Generalitat Government

“To the political, judicial and police repression, we now add economic repression,” said Esquerra Deputy Secretary General and spokeswoman Marta Vilalta, bringing before the plenary session of Parliament the case against forty senior officials of several past Generalitat governments regarding Foreign Ministry expenditure, as well as those of the Diplocat Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia, between 2011 and 2017. The officials have been summoned to declare on 29 June before the Court of Auditors.

Ms Vilalta accused the Spanish administration of applying economic repression: “Now, through the Court of Auditors, they have built a misleading case with information wrested during the period home rule had been suspended and direct rule imposed by Spain.” She censured Spain for targeting the Foreign Ministry’s activity as illegal and “wanting to punish any suspicion of collaboration in the independence process.” In her address, Ms Vilalta also denounced that “Investigating Court 13, the High Court of Justice in Catalonia, the Supreme Court, and now the Court of Auditors are thus applying multiple penalties for the same charges in a concerted, arbitrary, abusive manner, and attacking the basic rights of those being persecuted.”

The Spanish state is judicializing a conflict that should always have been resolved politically. Independence is a legitimate cause

Bernat Solé Foreign Minister of the Catalan Government

In this regard, both Ms Vilalta and Foreign Minister Bernat Solé have offered “full support for the defendants in this general cause against independence. For all of them, including their families, who are suffering as much, or more than anyone in this unjust persecution,” said the spokeswoman. Minister Solé said that “the Spanish state is judicializing a conflict that should always have been resolved politically. Independence is a legitimate cause, even acknowledged in the Spanish Constitution. No one should ever be tried for being in favour of independence,” he added.

A court rooted in the Franco dictatorship

Marta Vilalta finally recalled that the Court of Auditors “is a clear example of nepotism, as it is composed of a hundred relatives of senior officials and ministers of the Spanish socialist PSOE party and the right-wing People’s Party, and its legacy is rooted in the Franco dictatorship, which all illustrates the decline of the Regime of 78,” so-called as it is built on the Constitution of 1978 drafted upon the death of dictator Franco.