Commissioner Eduard Sallent is the number 2 within the Catalan police, known as the Mossos d'Esquadra, serving under Josep Maria Estela. Sallent worked in the intelligence department five years ago, so we ask him to look back on that fateful August 17, what we learnt and how anti-terrorist surveillance is carried out now in Catalonia.

A police intervention by the Catalan police force, known as the Mossos d'Esquadra, following an altercation in a bar in Barcelona's Eixample at the end of last year has ended with the arrest of two officers and four more under investigation. The police officers allegedly arrested a man, but instead of taking him directly to the police station, allegedly held him, abused him and beat him. The duty judge has provisionally sent the two arrested officers to prison and has set a €6,000.

The 21st examining magistrate of Barcelona has agreed to close the case against the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, after considering that the investigated facts –subsidies to charities– "do not constitute a criminal offence", after seven months of investigation.

After the pandemic hit, the courts were expecting a wave of lawsuits for unfair dismissals and business closures. Yet this is not quite what happened: "There has been an increase in these matters, but not as much we expected," president of Barcelona's Court of Appeal, Antonio Recio, explains. On the other hand, the effects of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic been more noticeable in first instance courts, which have seen an increased volume of lawsuits over non-payment of rents.

The first analysis of the use of Catalan in the administration of justice reveals a bleak picture. Spanish continues to be the court's mother tongue, despite efforts by the Generalitat to reverse the situation. The indicator that until now was used to measure the use of Catalan – the number of sentences passed in this language – has reached historic lows: out of every 100 sentences that are made public, not even 7 are written in Catalan. But the rest of the values that the Department has reviewed show that Catalan is not even respected when it is litigants themselves who request it: according to the results, 376,627 litigants who requested to receive notifications in Catalan have found that they continue to receive them in Spanish, i.e. 81% of the total. "And this does not help them to feel that justice is close to them", said Catalan Justice minister Lourdes Ciuró, who assured that if their linguistic preference is not respected, their citizenship rights are being violated.

Almost 1,700 hectares in Catalonia are on fire, distributed in three fires in Corbera d'Ebre (Terra Alta), Artesa de Segre (Noguera) and Castellar de la Ribera (Solsonès) which on Thursday continued to wreak havoc in the area. The weather is not helping: neither the heat reaching maximum temperatures, nor the dry storms, nor the lightning, which have strengthened the fire overnight. Above all, the firefighters are concerned about the Solsonès fire, because, although it has only burnt about 350 hectares so far, it is the one which could potentially get out of control: "If it gets complicated we could have a big forest fire," said the operational head of the Fire Service, David Borrell. On the other hand, the Terra Alta fire is practically stabilised, although it is still active. The fire in Artesa de Segre will continue burning for hours, since firefighters have chosen to create a barriers around 5,000 hectares and let the fire burn out at its own pace within this area. With three fires still burning and with a weather that favors the appearance of more fires, forest rangers have activated level 2 of Plan Alfa in 27 counties in Catalonia. Certain activities susceptible to cause forest fires will be restricted and, in addition, Presidency minister Laura Vilagrà has warned that the Catalan Government is considering "closing natural parks" this summer due to the risk of fires.

Anna is seven years old and has been living in San Sebastián with her mother for four years, but in the eyes of the system it is as if she had just been born now. Although her mother, of Cameroonian origin, has her papers in order to reside in the State, she had not been able to inscribe her daughter in the registry, she had no health card or passport, she was not registered as a resident and, although she went to school, she could not change schools or attend extracurricular activities. The reason is that Anna was denied a nationality because she was born during her mother's migratory journey between Cameroon, Morocco and Spain. Now a court has ordered the Spanish state to give Anna Spanish nationality, against the Prosecutor's Office's and the State attorney's position.

Brian Raimundo Céspedes listened impassively, as if it had nothing to do with him, as his victim appeared before the judge and told of the "horror" she has gone through. This is not the only evidence of the man's coldness. The evidence collected in the investigation's summary, to which ARA has had access, also points in this direction. Just the day after the brutal assault on the minor, the detainee – who remains in custody – went to Igualada's courts to appear in a follow-up hearings for his probation – he had been sentenced for assaulting a former partner.

The judge who for a year and a half has been investigating alleged spying on former Speaker and current Catalan minister for Enterprise and Employment Roger Torrent, and ERC Barcelona mayoral candidate Ernest Maragall has provisionally shelved the case, court sources have told ARA. So far this was the only court case open in Catalonia over Catalangate. In fact, the magistrate who is in charge of Barcelona's examining magistrate's court no. 32 still has to deal with complaints for the alleged spying on about sixty politicians, activists and lawyers, some of which were presented by Òmnium Cultural, CUP and lawyer Andreu van den Eynde, which had been sent from one court to another until they too ended up at court no. 32.

Catalonia's High Court has ordered the forced execution of its own ruling forcing schools across Catalonia to teach at least 25% of classes in Spanish. The judges compel Catalan Education minister Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray to "dictate instructions and establish necessary checks" so that in a fortnight "all students are effectively and immediately taught" 25% of classes in Spanish. The judges consider that in order to guarantee "the normal classroom use" of both languages, students have to teach Spanish "and another core subject" in this language.

For over a year now, Barcelona's Court no. 32 has been investigating alleged spying on former Catalan speaker – now a Catalan minister – Roger Torrent and ERC spokesman in Barcelona City Council Ernest Maragall using Pegasus spyware. But it is only now that the judge has ordered both politicians to hand in their mobile phones, so they may be analysed. This is one of the first proceedings ordered by the court, which until now had only requested information about Pegasus's developer, Israeli company NSO, through letters rogatory to different countries that are still awaiting a response.

Up to five security cameras recorded the man arrested for raping a minor in Igualada in the early hours of November 1. The video surveillance systems of five companies in the Les Comes industrial estate captured the man following the victim on her way to the train to return home after having been with some friends at Èpic nightclub. In one of its resolutions, first reported by El País, the judge claims the images constitute "solid" evidence indicating the man is the author of the "brutal" aggression, together with the fact that the Mossos d'Esquadra managed to locate his moble phone in the area at the time of the attack.

The trickle of sentences forcing 25% of classes to be taught in Spanish continues. Catalonia's High Courts has partially accepted the request of the parents of two students for their children to receive a quarter of their lessons in Spanish. These are the first resolutions to be issued after the Supreme Court upheld the 2020 ruling which forced the Generalitat to apply this percentage in all Catalan schools.

More than five months after the brutal rape of a 16-year-old girl when she was leaving a nightclub in Igualada last November 1, the police have made an arrest. Early this morning, investigating officers searched the home of the arrested man, located in the centre of Igualada, in search of new evidence in the case.

Catalan ex-president Quim Torra was to face his second trial for disobedience this Thursday, for hanging a banner in defence of political prisoners from the Palau de la Generalitat. But in a statement and a video posted on social media, Torra has announced that he will not turn up in court: "Today I will be tried again, but I will not legitimise a new farce, a new repressive staging disguised as justice, with my presence. I ask for protection from international courts, because I do not recognise the legitimacy of the Spanish justice system which does not respect either international treaties or fundamental rights. Catalan pro-independence supporters can only find justice in Europe," he said.

Nine months later, Catalonia's High Court has completed its investigation of Speaker Laura Borràs's actions as the head of the Institution of Catalan Letters (ILC). The magistrate who was in charge of the case has concluded that there are indications that Borràs "abused" her position at the head of the institution, allegedly awarding contracts to a friend irregularly, whom she had known for years and with whom she had worked. The decision means that Borràs and all other suspects under investigation are one step away from standing trial for the crimes of misfeasance, embezzlement of public money, administrative fraud and forgery. In fact, the judge, Jordi Seguí, has given the Prosecutor's Office ten days to say whether it wants to press charfes against Borràs and the rest of the defendants. The defenses also have ten days to present allegations. The Speaker has always denied any wrongdoing.

A month and a half after a court admitted a lawsuit against the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau will appear in court. She stands accused of malfeasance, fraudulent hiring, embezzlement, influence peddling and prohibited negotiations. The plaintiff is an association which accuses Colau of having arbitrarily allocated money from City Council coffers to charities and campaign groups close to her party, including the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages (PAH), of which Colau was a founder and spokesperson.

The €6.6m that Fèlix Millet and Jordi Montull diverted from the Palau de la Música to Convergència (CDC) will not be returned to the institution and will be part of the sum of assets to be distributed among the political party's creditors, which continues its liquidation process in a commercial court of Barcelona. Before the beginning of this contest, Barcelona's High Court found the party guilty of illegally financing itself through commissions from construction company Ferrovial, which were disguised as donations to the Palau. The court ordered that this money be returned to the cultural institution and opened proceedings to determine whether PDECat or JxCat could be considered heirs of defunct parties and the conviction. Now the court has paralysed this procedure, a decision that implies stopping pursuing the two parties over the sentence of the Palau case.

The case of alleged irregular tendering at the Fire Department is not the first judicial proceedings for corruption faced by the Sevillian company Iturri, already convicted in a case of commissions in exchange for awards from the City Council of Telde (Canary Islands) and also investigated in another case of alleged corruption in Palma ten years ago. Nor is it the first time in court for the current manager of Iturri in Catalonia, who was already convicted in this case in Palma. According to a sentence to which ARA has had access, he took six months in prison for having paid €120,300 to former head of Emergencies of Jaume Matas's Balearic government, Joan Pol, for some consultancy work.

Former Catalan police chief constable Josep Lluís Trapero has returned to court a year and a half after being acquitted by Spain's High Court. This time he has done it to testify as a witness in the trial of an alleged plot of police corruption and drug trafficking, known as the 'Macedonia' case, which had him in the spotlight for nearly a decade. Trapero was never investigated in the case, but for eight years the judge suspected some of his subordinates, members of the Catalan police's anti-corruption unit, over their relationship with an informant, Manuel Gutiérrez Carbajo, whom the prosecution considers the leader of a drug gang. The major agreed with the defence, which claims former superintendent José Manuel Villarejo took advantage of the Macedonia case to discredit Trapero and the Catalan police force.