Basque president confirms Rajoy did not guarantee Catalan self-government would not be suspended

MadridAt the trial of the Catalan pro-independence leaders on Thursday, Basque Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu, one of the protagonists of October 2017, testified about last-minute attempts to avoid the clash between the Catalan and Spanish governments over the declaration of independence and the application of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which suspended Catalan self-government. In the ninth session of the trial, Urkullu kicked off the second round of witness questioning, this time with a political profile, after former Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy and deputy PM Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría reappeared on Wednesday to defend the application of Article 155, deny the role of "mediators" with the Generalitat, deny responsibility for the police operations in September and October 2017, and transfer the blame for the violence of 1-O to the Catalan authorities. And he did so with the most concise answers and detailed content of the entire cross-examination phase. In just over 45 minutes, he went over his role from the moment Carles Puigdemont asked him to become a mediator with the Spanish government to resolve the "blockage", up to the declaration of independence on October 27, including the five proposals for dialogue that he laid down on the table.

In contrast to what Rajoy had said in court, the Basque president acknowledged his role as “intercessor", starting in the summer of 2017, between the Generalitat and the Spanish government —although he stated that he never came to the point of negotiating the right to self-determination or the referendum— and confirmed one of the key aspects of the events of October that precipitated the declaration of independence on October 27. Urkullu described the Spanish PM as harbouring doubts about how to respond to 1-O. He assured that Mariano Rajoy never guaranteed, on October 26, that he would agree not to impose direct rule on Catalonia, if Carles Puigdemont decided to call early elections. "There was no official response from the Spanish government in regard to direct rule", he said in response to Francesc Homs, lawyer for Catalan Minister Josep Rull. However, he admitted that the Spanish president "did not take the application of 155 as a given" and for that reason there were negotiations until the last moment.

Urkullu recalled how during the month of October "public proposals were made to suspend Catalonia’s home rule" with the commitment of Pedro Sánchez and Rajoy to bring in direct rule. One of the proceedings under discussion, according to the Basque leader, was the multiple "interpretations" of the application of Article 116 of the Constitution, which established the declaration of a state of alarm and exception through an organic law, but made it clear that he never spoke to Rajoy about invoking this article.

Earlier meetings at Puigdemont's request

Urkully also explained that he met with Santamaría on June 19 at the Barcelona airport to request a meeting with Rajoy, which took place on July 19, two and a half months before the October referendum. "From there, many conversations and meetings were held with various people with different responsibilities, from the social, political, economic, business, and cultural fields, linked to the Catalan reality", noted the Basque president, who pointed out that from October 4 to October 27, meetings and conversations were frequent.

One of the calls with Rajoy took place on September 21, the day after the Guardia Civil searched the Ministry of Economy and other public facilities of the Generalitat. "I told him that things were getting out of hand" Urkullu said, worried about “a social breakdown", and revealed that Rajoy assured him that "he would take great care" with everything that he would do.

Rufián: "The only violence I saw was by the police"

After Urkullu, it was Gabriel Rufián’s turn. The spokesman for Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya in the Spanish parliament stated that "the only violence" he saw in Catalonia on October 1 was by the Spanish police. Rufián explained that during the referendum day he observed people "yearning to vote" and that many people "slept at the polling stations for fear that the police would turn up." The ERC representative did not abandon his provocative tone and in answer to Vox questions he said he thought it was a "shame" that [far-right party] Vox was a plaintiff in the case and he denied that the official from Court 13 left via the roof on September 20. "It's 'fake news', just like the Spanish language being persecuted in Catalonia," Rufián claimed.

Later, Albano Dante Fachin, former Catalan Parliament MP and ex-Secretary General of Podemos in Catalonia, offered his point of view on the public gathering of September 20 in front of Barcelona’s Ministry of Economy (one of the events being used to justify the charges of rebellion against the defendants) and assured that he saw people "enter and leave [the Ministry] in a normal way". "The only thing I perceived as a nuisance to the Guardia Civil officers was the smoke from my cigarette," Fachin said, when asked about the atmosphere of the mobilization. As to 1-O, the driving force behind the Som Alternativa party explained that he participated in the initiatives that took place at the polling stations in the hours leading up to the referendum and, despite not remembering if he called on people to go to the polls, he did say that he did not call on the people to stay home.

After Wednesday's testimony by Núria de Gispert, ex-president of Parliament, Thursday was Ernest Benach's turn, at the request of Carme Forcadell's defense, while next week it will be the turn of the current president of the chamber, Roger Torrent. Benach argued, as did Forcadell, that the cahmber’s Executive Committee does not have to consider the content when it allows for proposals to go to the floor for debate and that neither, once this process has begun, does this mean that it enters into the day’s agenda. This is one way to disassociate the Parliament's former president from the final decision-making responsibility for the breakaway laws and also the unilateral declaration of independence.