Six years without criminal trials in Vic: "Many lawyers have had to act as taxi drivers to Manresa"
The capital of Osona has a temporary solution after the only courtroom where hearings were held was closed in 2019.
BarcelonaFifty kilometers to reach a trial in Manresa: that's the distance that defendants, victims, witnesses, and lawyers from the Osona region have had to travel for more than six years. It wasn't until this week that criminal trials resumed in Vic, with a temporary solution in a basement on Ronda Camprodon, meaning those involved in the proceedings no longer need to travel to the Manresa courthouse, where public transport connections don't always make it easy to arrive on time. "Many lawyers have had to act as taxi drivers for their clients," explains Rogeli Montoliu, dean of the Vic Bar Association. "It's like a doctor who lives in Vic and has to go to the Hospital Clínic to perform surgery and have to take the patient in his car because the patient is also from Vic and has no other way to get there," criticizes Montoliu, who is also president of the Catalan Bar Council (Cicac). The lawyer asserts that over the years it has been "very common" for a hearing to be postponed because someone was unable to attend, and in this regard, he emphasizes that these trials—which deal with crimes such as theft, robbery, or traffic offenses—often involve "people with limited financial resources" who lack the means to attend. The trials now being held in Vic include crimes committed throughout the Osona region, and in fact, hearings have been scheduled in the new courtroom for the past three months to ensure it can be used normally from day one, according to sources at the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC). However, they add that for some time there will still be some cases tried in Manresa because they were already scheduled there and because with only one courtroom it would have been impossible to handle all the pending hearings.
In some cases, the distance to travel to a trial could reach 80 kilometers, and it's important to note that, from towns like Rupit and Tavertet, the journey to Manresa is practically impossible by public transport, explains Albert Sentias, a solicitor from Vic. Sentias, who is also a member of the professional association in Mataró—which has branches in Vic and Arenys de Mar—ironically points out that the fact that Vic cases were handled by judges in Manresa made them "pioneers" in electronic processing, so that even before the first steps of digitalization in the courts, the courts in the capital of Bages accepted them.
A provisional solution
However, those involved agree that the courtroom that began operating this week is a temporary solution while they await the construction of a permanent courthouse in Vic. For the time being, the Department of Justice has allocated €426,000 to adapt the ground floor of the Ronda Camprodon, which was provided by the City Council, and estimates that the future 10,000-square-meter building, which will house all of Vic's judicial offices, will cost around €25 million. Currently, there is no timeline or budget for its construction, but the Department and the City Council have already agreed that it will be built on a municipal plot of land in Era d'en Sellés.
As in other towns, Vic does not have its own criminal court, and those who handle cases affecting Osona are still judges from Manresa, where there are three criminal magistrates who travel to Vic. "It's an irregularity that persists. Given the size of the region, we should have a criminal court," says Sentias. "We've gone back seven years, but even then the situation wasn't right. They've screwed us over so much that we're happy with this," he adds.
Trials "in a shop window"
From now on, the judges in Manresa will travel to Vic once a week to conduct trials. This practice had been in place until October 2019, when the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) suspended it because the commercial premises in Vic being used as a courtroom did not meet the minimum guarantees for separating defendants from victims, nor even for workplace safety, according to TSJC sources. Montoliu recalls that the trials were held in a commercial space – "in what is now a shop window" – and agrees that the space did not even meet the minimum standards of dignity. At that time, the governing body of judges warned that the trials would remain in Manresa until a suitable space was available in Vic that guaranteed the necessary treatment and consideration for staff, defendants, victims, and witnesses.
The chief prosecutor for the Vic, Manresa, and Igualada area, Joan Ramon Menac, believes that the "complications" experienced by users due to the lack of a courtroom made the recovery of such a space "very necessary for Vic." However, he admits that this has barely affected the public prosecutor's office, since until last July, the prosecutors assigned to Vic had their offices in Manresa. Indeed, it was only a few months ago that the Prosecutor's Office opened a new location in the capital of Osona; a change that has indeed represented "a great improvement" for the prosecutors. "We can be closer to the courts, lawyers, and those who use the justice system," he concludes.
