Catalan Trial: Day 24 summary

Newsdesk / ACN

5 years ago

Officers from the Spanish National Police, the Guardia Civil and the Catalan police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, were scheduled to testify on day 24 of the Catalan independence trial.

Catalan Trial: click here full details of those accused, the charges, and the accusers.

The proceedings began with the testimony of one Spanish police officer who spoke about a protest outside a hotel where some officers stayed during the peak of the independence bid, in La Seu d’Urgell, in the very north of central Catalonia.

The officer said he and his colleagues were ‘intimidated’ by the protestors because they could not get out of the hotel and ‘there was a lot of people.’

‘I saw a crowd getting closer to the hotel [where officers were lodged] to harass my colleagues, including a firetruck,’ said a second witness.

ALSO READ: Catalan trial: controversy over ‘rebellion’ and violence

A third officer spoke about Lleida, where he was stationed in autumn 2017, the day after the referendum (2 October) he and two more officers were insulted by an individual while they were wearing plain clothes.

Some of the Supreme Court judges, presided over by Manuel Marchena.

The court was told about an individual in Lleida who took photos of the officers and posted them to Facebook, urging people to protest at the hotel they were staying in, however, this file had already been closed by a court, which the officer was unaware of.

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The fourth and fifth officers testifying spoke about insults they received in Lleida and Girona respectively. The fifth said they were called ‘sons of bitches’ and ‘fascists’.

In the day’s sixth testimony, a Catalan police officer said she ‘couldn’t remember’ whether or not she sent WhatsApp messages telling people in which hotels Spanish police were staying.

‘We were shoved and I was hit with a motorbike helmet. They insulted us, but I didn’t receive any threats,’ the seventh testifier, a Catalan police officer who was injured following the Sabadell raids, explained. He later clarified that he didn’t go on sick leave, and said there were ‘no organisers’ of the protest, that it seemed ‘spontaneous’.

The eighth officer told of more hits and insults in the Sabadell operation, adding that he needed to go on sick leave due to the injuries he sustained on his elbow and finger.

In all, around 15 officers of both Catalan and Spanish law enforcement were scheduled to give testimony as witnesses.

The afternoon session of the trial finished early, at around 5pm. All witnesses in the afternoon were officers of the Guardia Civil. They had been stationed all around Catalonia, including the town of Gandesa, where the head of the police barracks recalled ‘harassment’ around the 1 October referendum, with specific acts such as ‘We Will Vote’ being spray painted on walls.

Another officer in the central Catalan town of Igualada testified that protests before the referendum ‘disrupted family life’, alleging that it ‘made their children anxious’. Yet another spoke of an ‘incendiary item’ thrown at the Guardia civil station at the end of September, which he would later be told was soaked in fuel.

He recalled some officers’ families changing rooms after the attack, and receiving support from some citizens – but not from politicians. A defence lawyer attempted to ask the officer whether there was any sign this attack was perpetrated by an independence supporter – but the courtroom president cut him off.

Catalan Trial: click here full details of those accused, the charges, and the accusers.

Click here for all articles and updates on the Catalan Trial

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