First plot twist in the Court of Auditors case after the body renewed its councillors. This Monday the courtroom has decided to accept the bond offered by the Institut Català de Finances to pay the €5.4m bail former Generalitat Foreign Office workers are facing, El País explained and ARA has confirmed. Initially, the delegate rejected this mechanism created by the Generalitat arguing that it could not cover the conducts of the thirty officials under investigation. The investigating delegate considered that the Generalitat's decree was legal, but that it did not cover those cases in which those involved had acted with "malice, guilt or gross negligence".

The Prosecutor's Office is taking former Speaker Roger Torrent to court alongside Parliamentary Bureau members Eugeni Campdepadrós, Josep Costa and Adriana Delgado. They stand accused of having disobeyed the Constitutional Court and having allowed the debate and the vote in the chamber of several resolutions on the monarchy and self-determination despite the warnings from the high court. The Public Prosecutor's Office has already filed its indictment, which calls for a 20-month bar from public office for Torrent, Costa and Campdepadrós, as well as a fine. Delgado will face a slightly lower 16-mont disqualification.

The historian Josep Lluís Alay, former president Carles Puigdemont's chief of staff, will have to appear in court in Barcelona. The Prosecutor's Office accuses him of having used public money to pay for a "personal" trip in 2018, as an observer in a referendum in New Caledonia and is seeking a three-year prison sentence and a seventeen-year bar from public office.

"A devastating discouraging effect on the right to political representation". This is what, according to Constitutional Court judges Juan Antonio Xiol and Maria Luisa Balaguer, the sentence of 11 and a half years in prison for the former Catalan Parliament Speaker Carme Forcadell causes. Xiol and Balaguer are the two members of the Constitutional Court that wrote a dissenting opinion to the plenary's decision to dismiss the appeal of Forcadell against the Supreme Court's sentence. In fact, they also did so in the appeals of Jordi Cuixart, Jordi Sànchez, Jordi Turull and Josep Rull. As they did in these cases, Forcadell's sentence is also considered "disproportionate". In the situation of the former president, another factor is added to the equation: the right to political representation, which they consider to have been violated.

The Court of Auditors continues its offensive against thirty former senior Generalitat officials investigated over the Catalan government's foreign action between 2011 and 2017, El País and El Mundo report and Efe has confirmed. The instructing delegate, Esperanza García, has decided to reject the guarantee the Institut Català de Finances (ICF) put forward to cover the bail of €5.4m imposed in June. Although she demanded that the money be paid urgently, the defendants devised a formula to avoid having to respond with their personal assets and the Government drew up a decree for the ICF to cover the bail. This alternative was endorsed by the Council of Statutory Guarantees and investigated by the Catalan Prosecutor's Office.

On the same day that the negotiating table met, the pro-independence members of the last Parliamentary Bureau – Roger Torrent, Josep Costa, Eusebi Campdepadrós and Adriana Delgado – were summoned to testify as accused before Catalonia's High Court for having processed resolutions in favour of self-determination and against the monarchy despite the warnings of the Constitutional Court. All appeared in court except Costa, who on Twitter explained that he does not recognise the court's "authority" to "judge parliament's agreements". Torrent, Delgado and Campdepadrós have defended MPs' freedom of speech and argued that the Constitutional Court's warning was ambiguous. According to court sources, Torrent emphasised the defence of parliamentary inviolability. "We explained that if we are sentenced it will lay a bad precedent from a democratic point of view," the former Speaker said after testifying.

Carlos Lesmes, the president of the Supreme Court, has been very critical of Pedro Sánchez over the pardon of political prisoners. In his speech at the opening of the judicial year, he has accused the Spanish government of "questioning" judicial independence when it granted the measure of grace to pro-independence leaders arguing that it helped coexistence. "Concord has even been set against resentment to explain this leniency, as if the court's action to apply the law which we must all obey were an obstacle to coexistence or obeyed different reasons from the ones foreseen in the rules," said the president of the General Council of the Judiciary. Lesmes has started his speech talking about judicial independence and has regretted that "from some political instances" this is set aside when judicial decisions "opposed to their designs hinder their strategies or they simply do not like them".

The National High Court has acquitted the two police officers who accompanied the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, when he was arrested in Germany in March 2018, of an accessory after the fact crime. The ruling considers it accredited that the two agents helped Puigdemont aware that he was under investigation in Spain and that there was a Euro arrest warrant in place, but concludes that the facts cannot be classified as an accessory after the fact crime under Article 541.3 of the Criminal Code, as the lawyers had argued since the arrest of Carlos de Pedro and Xavier Goicoechea in Catalonia by the Spanish police, days after the journey through northern and central Europe. The prosecution had asked for up to a year and a half in prison for each of them, after deciding to reduce the sentence request by half in the final conclusions of the trial held earlier this month at the headquarters of the National High Court in San Fernando de Henares, on the outskirts of Madrid.

The Spanish Government is unsure about how to react to the fund created by the Generalitat to guarantee the bonds demanded by the Court of Auditors over the Catalan government's foreign action. It already happened initially with the case opened by the audit body, which Minister of Transport and president Pedro Sánchez's right-hand man José Luis Ábalos described as a "stone in the road" of dialogue. But opposite, the Spanish government has the Spanish right who bellicose tone is keeping the government from openly criticising the Court. This could be turn into its first clash with the new Catalan government led by Pere Aragonès.

The Moncloa avoids making any comments for the moment on the Government's fund to pay the bonds of the Court of Auditors in the case for accounting responsibility against the foreign action of the Generalitat between 2011 and 2017, but warns that if it is not legal, it will appeal. The president of the Spanish executive, Pedro Sánchez, has assured that his government is studying the measure. "If it is subject to the law, nothing to object to. And if it is not, then obviously we will have to appeal", he said on Tuesday afternoon at a press conference in Tallinn.

The first trial arising from the exile of pro-independence leaders has begun on Tuesday at the National Court after several postponements due to a relative of the accused becoming ill. The two Catalan police officers - known as Mossos d'Esquadra - who accompanied former president Carles Puigdemont when he returned to Belgium on March 25, 2018 following the reactivation of the European and international arrest warrants face a request for three years in prison from the Prosecutor's Office, which accuses them of the crime of concealment. Xavier Goicoechea and Carlos de Pedro were traveling with Puigdemont, along with Junts senator Josep Maria Matamala and historian Josep Lluís Alay. The German police arrested the former president and let the other four occupants of the vehicle go and it was not until they returned to Catalonia, three days later, that the Spanish National Police acted against them.

The causes of the Catalan independence bid, in a broad sense, have not only had effects on those being investigated or convicted, but have had a full impact on the functioning of the Generalitat and all its machinery. With the 155 and the judicial processes for the 9-N, the 1-O and the investigations with millionaire bails in the Court of Auditors, the Catalan administration has been stressed and the civil servants in charge of the legal and economic management areas are going ahead with a lead foot when stamping their signature on any decision. "There has been a kind of psychosis", says a good connoisseur of the backstage of the Generalitat, while another official notes that what was once ordinary has become "extraordinary" and costs much more to do than years ago.

"For all these reasons, we will do it again". So ended the speech of the President of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart, at the 47th Human Rights Council of the UN, based in Geneva, but which this year has been held telematically. Cuixart has had a minute before hundreds of listeners around the world, including ministers, ambassadors and senior UN officials, in which he has charged against an "undemocratic" Spanish state. An attitude, according to Cuixart, that the UN has to correct: he has urged the United Nations to "act so that Spain respects international treaties". This is, in fact, the role of the council in which the President of Òmnium has participated in this Thursday, since it meets periodically to protect human rights and address situations in which they are violated. Specifically, Cuixart has had a voice in the eighteenth act that has been made in the framework of the Human Rights Council, where the special rapporteur on the right to peaceful assembly of the UN, Clement Voulé, has presented his annual report: "Access to justice as an integral element of the protection of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association".

The movement of tectonic plates has been smoothing the terrain so that the Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, can dedicate this week to defend the pardons of political prisoners without great resistance. First it was the endorsement of ERC for the pardons, but then this was added to that of the Spanish employers, the Cercle d'Economia and the Catalan Church, which were reacting in chain to the message, launched in May from the Spanish government, that the will was to release the pro-independence leaders. The week that starts this Monday is important for the head of the executive to control the story of this decision, with the memory of the clash with the State and the imprisonment of the sovereignty leaders still fresh in the memory of citizens of both sensibilities. It begins with an event at the Liceu in which, under the title "Reencuentro. A project for the future for all of Spain", Sánchez announced that tomorrow he will propose the granting of pardons to the Council of Ministers. "The government of Spain has decided to face the problem, to seek harmony, that's why I will propose the pardons to the Council of Ministers", he said: "We want to resume political dialogue".

Former Catalan Minister of Home Affairs Miquel Buch will have to go to trial for misfeasance and embezzlement of public money. The Prosecutor's Office accuses him of having hired a Catalan police officer as an adviser to the Department of the Home Affairs so that he could continue as ex-president Carles Puigdemont's bodyguard in exile, and asks that he be sentenced to six years in prison and be barred from office for up to 27 years. The penalty requested for the former Minister is even higher than the one that the Prosecutor's Office wants for the police officer, who is facing four and a half years in prison and a 23-year ban.

Pedro Sánchez's time for pardons has come. More than two and a half years after the sentence, he will have to get off the fence if he wants to make a gesture towards political prisoners, after the Supreme Court settled the process and transferred the final decision to the cabinet. As expected, the court presided over by Manuel Marchena is opposed to granting the measure of grace for all those convicted, a fact that already conditions the Spanish government because it will not be able to grant a full pardon. This decision comes in the middle of political debate on the measure of grace because the head of the executive has already hinted that it will grant them. "The Constitution includes a time for punishment and a time for concord. The government will make the decision for the benefit of harmony and coexistence," he said on Wednesday during the control session in Congress.

Despite the fact that it has already been six months since former Catalan president Quim Torra left the political front line, court cases continue to accumulate. One of them is the dispute that he maintains with the Central Electoral Board for initially refusing to withdraw banners and symbols in favour of the freedom for political prisoners from the administration's building during the electoral campaign of March 2019. The Electoral Board now demands payment of a €8,500 fine and Torra has formally communicated this Wednesday, after receiving the requirement, that he does not intend to pay. "I will not voluntarily pay these fines. They are part of the plundering disguised as legality that for years, decades and centuries the Spanish state has been executing in the Països Catalans," he said in a statement.

Amnesty International continues to denounce that the secretary general of Junts and former leader of the Assemblea, Jordi Sànchez, and the president of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart, are deprived of their freedom three years and five months after their imprisonment. This time the organisation has highlighted their situation in the annual report on human rights in the world. In the section on Spain, Amnesty warns that Sànchez and Cuixart "were still in prison" at the end of 2020 after being found guilty "of sedition in connection with the 2017 demonstrations and independence referendum." Without going into assessments, the organisation recalls the situation of the leaders of the sovereignist entities in the section that deals with freedom of expression and assembly in the Spanish state.

The State Attorney has not dispelled uncertainty about the pardon for political prisoners and has not taken a position on whether or not to grant it. In the report requested by the Supreme Court, which El Español has advanced and which ARA has had access to, the organism, which depends on the Ministry of Justice, argues that stating its opinion would be "anticipating or determining the sense of a decision that corresponds to the Spanish government" and chooses not to get involved. "The offended party that issues the report is the general administration of the State, of which both the body that has to formulate the proposal for a pardon - the Minister of Justice - and the body that has to agree to it - the Council of Ministers - are part," emphasises the State lawyer Rosa María Seoane, who acted as prosecutor during the trial.