Constitutional Court upholds conviction of Junqueras and Romeva despite three judges' dissent

MadridThe Constitutional Court has rejected former Catalan Vice-president Oriol Junqueras's and former Catalan Foreign Affairs minister Raül Romeva's appeals against the Independence Bid sentence. Nevertheless, three judges dissented from the majority opinion. They are Juan Ramón Sáez, the magistrate who already deviated from the Supreme Court's when he acquitted the leadership of the Catalan police at Spain's High Court; and Juan Antonio Xiol and María Luisa Balaguer, both of whom had already presented dissenting votes in the cases related to other pro-independence leaders.

This Thursday the Constitutional Court is expected to publish the complete majority opinion in Junqueras's and Romeva's ruling, as well as former Catalan Home Affairs Minister Joaquim Forn's and former Catalan Employment Minister Dolors Bassa's. Dissenting votes, on the other hand, will still take a few days to be published, according to court sources.

Now that the Constitutional Court has finally ruled on their case, the Independence leaders will be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), as former president of Òmnium Cultural Jordi Cuixart did last June. Justices Ziol and Balaguer Xiol and Balaguer already maintained a dissenting opinion in that case, and expressed concern the punishment for sedition "threatened to impoverish" democracy.