Catalan Trial: Day 46 summary

On day 46 of the Catalan Trial, testimonies were heard from more experts called by both the prosecution and the defence teams, including experts that testified on documents seized from the Catalan Finance Department.

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

In an official communication to the defence teams, it was also stated that the trial of the 12 Catalan pro-independence leaders is set to come to a close on 11 June, almost exactly four months since it started.

The sessions on 27-29 May have been allocated to the long-awaited documentary evidence phase, the last evidence phase before the closing statements.

The public and ‘popular prosecutors’, including far-right Vox, will make their closing arguments and their proposed verdicts and sentences on 3 June.

Meanwhile the defence teams will take the stand for their closing arguments on 10 June, before the defendants make their closing remarks on 11 June.

The Supreme Court ruled that each of the 12 accused parties will be given 15 minutes to address the court directly before the proceedings are over until the sentencing.

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On Thursday, the 46th day, the first two witnesses were Josefina Valls and Xavier Urios, director of services and chief lawyer at the Catalan governance ministry. They said that the ministry didn’t spend money on the referendum, and an electronic voting trial was unrelated.

Next up was Pau Villòria, head of the Department of Enterprise during the 1 October 2017 referendum. According to him, they did not spend money on the referendum nor did they allow any of their venues to be used for that purpose.

Josep Solà, head of services at the Department of Enterprise, took the witness stand having been called in by Santi Vila‘s defence team. Vila is the former Catalan Minister for Enterprise who is accused of misuse of public funds and disobedience.

Next, Carlos Javier Irisarri, José Manuel Cámara, Jordi Duatis and Joan Güel i Roca testified together as experts on the cost of opening the voting venues on 1 October 2017. These experts were called by both the defence and the prosecution teams – two witnesses for each.

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The experts called in by the lawyers of the former Catalan Labour Minister Dolors Bassa said that they could not establish a rental cost for public venues that were used during the referendum since these were not bound by rental contracts.

The first half hour of the afternoon session in the Supreme Court was dominated by disputes over the legitimacy of the experts from the Spanish police force.

The dispute ended with one expert being dismissed and another cross-examined as a lay witness. Next up was a report into the injuries suffered by police officers on 1 October 2017 by doctors Xavier Crusi and Ferran Caballero.

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The doctors say none of the 60 cases they examined related to ‘serious’ injuries. In 32 cases, no treatment was recommended. A further 11 cases were finger sprains. Others involved bruising.

The next witness was Catalan and Spanish linguist Gemma Rigau, who said that some of the Catalan interior minister’s [Joaquim Forn] comments were mistranslated from Catalan to Spanish.

Next to testify were Rubén Pujol and Jose Navarro about one of the referendum websites.

The expert testimony phase concluded today and the trial will resume on Monday 27 May at 10am,

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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