Barcelona mayor and European Greens’ head show support to prosecuted leaders

The mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, supported the Catalan pro-independence prosecuted leaders outside Spain’s Supreme Court in Madrid. She did it along with the Greens leader in the European Parliament, Ska Keller, and the spokesperson of the European United Left group in the same chamber, Gabriele Zimmer.

Talking to the press, Colau denounced the “judicialisation of politics and the injustice of pre-trial prison for the pro-independence leaders.” “There was no violence,” she added, calling for the Catalonia-Spain conflict to be solved through “dialogue and negotiation” instead of criminal courts. “We are here due to the failure of politics,” she said.

The Greens leader in the European Parliament said that she believes it is “simply not possible to solve a political problem, a political conflict, by means of the judiciary.”
This, said the MEP, is a “big failure, it’s a failure of the politics of Rajoy.” She urged instead having a “sincere dialogue that would bring everyone to the table,” something which she said “any new Spanish government” will “need” to do. Ultimately, she said that she trusts “that the unfounded accusations of rebellion and sedition will be found false.”

Self-determination is a right

The spokesperson of the European United Left group in the European Parliament, Gabriele Zimmer, also supported a “political solution” and warned that “judicializing the proceedings and putting politicians in prison” will deepen the conflict and could cause “violence.” “Now that there will be elections in Spain, this trial should end already and what is necessary is a dialogue and negotiations.”

Zimmer further expressed that the right to self-determination is a “human” right within the charter of the United Nations, signed by Spain. She further regretted that the former Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell is prosecuted for “having allowed a vote.”