That a judge would admit as a popular prosecutor in a judicial process an association supposedly formed by animals seems like a bad joke and an exhibition of arrogance. This is the case of the National Court magistrate María Tardón, who has decided to investigate the massive entry of immigrants into Ceuta on July 30th and 31st, because she thinks those events may constitute an attack against the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of the Spanish state. Against the unity of Spain, that is. We already know what this is about because it has also been verbalized by patriotic luminaries like Abascal and Ayuso, and even the always helpless Feijóo: it is about prosecuting Pedro Sánchez for high treason. And to achieve this, any support is good, even that of an association called Zeolandia, with a board of directors supposedly formed by four dogs and a cat. On its very website, it appears that the entity behind it is the Liberum association, formed by jurists close —oh surprise— to the Spanish nationalist far-right who have already appeared as a popular prosecutor in other proceedings against the PSOE and/or the government of Spain. The animal joke has the touch of the foolish humor of the stale right. But the objective is no joke: the Spanish right has long been longing to do with Sánchez as Bolsonaro and company did with Lula in Brazil. That is to say, to take a president to prison, dragged by an avalanche of accusations in which lies, half-truths, proven facts, and the pressure capacity of a power environment that treats the state as its own property are mixed. In her writing, Magistrate Tardón speaks of “criminal conduct that has not only had as a direct and immediate victim the city of Ceuta and its inhabitants, but the Kingdom of Spain itself, since it could constitute an attack against national sovereignty, the independence and stability of the State, its territorial integrity, national defense, foreign security, and the stability of our rule of law”. These are very strong words. The supposed entity of cats and dogs has filed a contentious-administrative appeal against the government of Spain for “deliberate omission of preventive security measures in Ceuta” and “concealment of information”.

Santos Cerdán could be representing (if the conditional sentence ends up being unnecessary, the courts will have to prove it) the scandalous and at the same time old episode of economic corruption, when someone sees millions passing by and believes they've found a way to grease their fingers, themselves, the party, or both, until they finally get caught. For now, the indications have been enough to keep Pedro Sánchez hanging by a thread. His criteria in choosing organization secretaries is dubious, to say the least, and if solid evidence of illegal financing appears, the thread will break.

From the 19th century to the present day, a serious lack of a genuinely "liberal" political culture has been evident in Spain, especially in the institutions of the judicial leadership. The journey begins with the Cadiz Constitution of 1812, which does not even mention the judiciary, conceived as a subsidiary body of the executive branch. Under Franco's regime, the courts constituted the legal arm of the dictatorship. In fact, the judges of the highest institutions have been more loyal to the goals of the permanence of the State (unity and monarchy) than to the goals of political liberalism and the rule of law (individual and collective rights and freedoms, judicial impartiality, separation of powers).

One of the most shocking aspects of the latest CIS survey is that the judiciary is the second-highest-rated Spanish institution, and that all the suspicions about its lack of neutrality are concentrated on its actions regarding political parties. We learned this precisely the same week that the Supreme Court denied, first, amnesty to Carles Puigdemont, delusionally claiming that he obtained a "personal benefit of a financial nature" from the trial, and that this fits in a very twisted way within the disgraceful and avoidable exception provided for by the amnesty law. Second, the same high court has ruled against a pardon for Oriol Junqueras, which could exonerate him from his disqualification from office because, in the opinion of such learned judges, and contrary to the opinion of the Prosecutor's Office, that would be tantamount to replacing the partial and irrevocable pardon granted for another prison sentence for his 1870 prison term.

Justice is the last ratio, the last argument, of the democratic system. It is the place where citizens, companies or other agents turn when they feel mistreated or are victims of abuse or aggression. We expect reparation from justice and, also, punishment for the guilty. Justice is fundamental to give the system meaning. If there is no justice, there is no democracy. And if it works poorly or defectively, it is the whole that is irremediably delegitimized. It is democracy that is devalued in the eyes of the people. It is precisely for this reason, because of the fundamental importance that, in democratic terms, but also moral, justice has, that I have never understood the blatant abandonment to which Spain has been subjected.

Pablo Llarena is back on the charge in Europe. After more than three years of fiascos due to the refusal of several European courts to grant the extradition of the exiles of the Independence bid through Euro-orders presented by the Supreme Court, Llarena, who is in charge of the case against the independence movement, seems determined to play it out before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Llarena has finally expressed his willingness to transfer to the highest EU judicial instance a pre-trial question to clarify the limits of the state courts at the time of rejecting the euro-orders. It is, therefore, to finally set a general position. The Belgian refusal to send to Spain Catalan ex Minister of Culture Lluís Puig Gordi has the last straw for Llarena who has never given his arm to twist before the refusal of his European colleagues, whom he has not hesitated to accuse of disloyalty. In addition, despite the fact that there is still a lot to be decided, he has also wanted to take advantage of the decision of the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in favour of withdrawing Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí's immunity.

RIDICULE The epidemiological situation in Catalonia - with all its derivatives: welfare, schooling, socioeconomic - is no worse, and in some respects even better, than in Spain as a whole. But what the Catalan government does, or the local councils do, is of no use; because the idea that this country of ours is ungovernable and does not deserve even the misery of autonomy is well-established. All we have to do is to listen to the people of order, with the choral support of those who quote Tarradellas every day: "In politics you can do anything but make a fool of yourself". A quote that in the Spanish case is sadly true: the episode of Quim Torra's banner, for some, is more scandalous than the fact that the Electoral Board dismissed him, not caring about what the electoral vote wanted. For a certain Catalonia, ridicule cannot be tolerated, but the hijacking of democracy is tolerable. This is how it is.