Former Foreign Minister Raul Romeva accuses the Spanish state of making political and democratic ideas crimes

A new episode of repression by the Spanish judiciary against the independence movement and the government of Catalonia. Court number 18 in Barcelona has opened a new investigation into the Catalan Generalitat government’s foreign action. The case targets the former Foreign Affairs minister, Raül Romeva, who is already serving a twelve-year sentence for his part in the government that organised the Catalan referendum in 2017.

“The Supreme Court, the Court of Auditors, court number 13, the Provincial Court... and now court number 18”. That is how Raül Romeva denounces the fragmentation of investigations and the judicial ferocity against the Catalan independence movement. “The state makes certain democratic ideas a crime and then mobilizes the public prosecutors to imprison us and ruin our lives” said the former minister. Raül Romeva has been unjustly jailed in a Catalan prison for more than three years.

This particular case arises as a result of a complaint by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, based on a report from the Court of Auditors which questions the expenses of the Generalitat’s department of Foreign Action between 2011 and 2017. The Spanish justice is now pursuing everything which has to do with the internationalization of the Catalan self-determination process and the legitimate work of Raül Romeva at the head of his department.