A stroke of the nail – 27/04/2019

My mother, who recently pbaded away, said a strange thing when something worthy of a celebration happened. "Applause on the nails!" Then he clasped his fingers with both hands and hit his nails. I understood this as ambiguous applause, without sound, for something that was not serious. It's an ironic move.

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If I interpret it well, then the Spanish justice deserves applause to have absolved all crimes this week to Sandro Rosell, former president of FC Barcelona. And he deserves a few punches for jailing him for 21 months in a "preventive prison", a fashionable phenomenon known today in Spain under the name of "prison without trial" in dictatorial countries. or bananas from Africa or Latin America where I lived in the last century.

More specifically, the person who deserves a sentence is Judge Carmen Lamela. It's she who put him in jail on May 25, 2017 (interesting detail since Rosell's mother is from Argentina). Although he was not accused of terrorism but of alleged financial crimesit was she who rejected her request for bail until the trial finally began in February of this year and four days later, on the 27th of the month, the national court of Madrid released him. No deposit.

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Which suggests that the judges of the hearing did not have to go through much of the subject before understanding what Lamela could not or did not want to see, namely that the charges against Rosell were going to be very difficult to sustain. proofs. The truth is that the accusations themselves were of dubious validity. I wrote the following about the Rosell case last October under the title "A Clbadic of Injustice".

"The imputation relates to the sale by a company that owned Rosell's television rights to matches of the Brazilian football team.It was 12 years ago and the body allegedly injured does not reside in Spain, but in Brazil.It concerns the Brazilian football federation.But it turns out that the Brazilian Football Federation has accused Rosell of nothing, rather than thank you for getting great benefits. Brazilian law does not search for any crime. "

This week, a Latin American lawyer living in Spain told me that it was as if we had supposedly had homobadual relations in Saudi Arabia and that the Spanish justice would do so and imprison him. for that, without the Saudis having even asked for his extradition. Ok, the lawyer friend has a little exaggerated. But not.

What can not be overestimated is the atrocity committed by the Spanish justice, via the Lamela, against a Rosell collaborator, Joan Besolí, accused of having helped to launder money. I wrote this in October: "Besolí is taking the same time as Rosell in prison, and without trial." Two days after admission to prison, the doctors informed Besolí's 18-year-old son that he had become a paraplegic following 39, an accident at work … Justice did not leave Besolí the choice to go out to visit his son, not even a morning, an hour or a minute, nor at the hospital, neither at home nor anywhere else in prison. " Until he was also released on February 27 and acquitted this week.

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There is a lot of speculation that Rosell and Besolí may go to court to ask compensation. This must tempt them. What should be done, based on the principle that many insist that Spain is a serious and modern democracy, is to set up a commission of inquiry to clarify how it was possible for Judge Lamela and the others Judges who rewarded her for their work with a promotion last July to the Supreme Court, they were able to attack justice so blatantly. And not so that Rosell and Besolí can take revenge, even if. But because Rosell is not the only one to have suffered the cruel whims of the law. The nine Catalan separatist independence fighters imprisoned for more than a year are suffering today as they face a farce of trial and are accused of "violent rebellion".

I would say more. We urgently need a political party proposing a reform of the Spanish judicial system. I have no doubt that many of the Spanish judges, even the majority, are respectable, but those in positions of maximum responsibility display so little judgment, rigor and humanity, which indicates that There is a cancer in the Spanish democracy that needs to be eradicated. It would be the same for some of the countries that left the belly of the motherland, among those whose most damaging legacy in Spain was the lack of rigor and honesty in the exercise of the law.

This weekend, there are general elections in Spain. As I have found in some of these dictatorial or banana countries in which I have lived, the holding of elections has limited value when citizens can not rely on the impartiality of the judicial system. Let's see Will there be someone in Spain who thinks that, in the same circumstances as Rosell, Real Madrid President Florentino Pérez would have spent an hour, a minute, a second in "pre-trial detention" ? No, there is no one. Nobody imagines having even brought him to justice.

Until someone shows me the opposite, I will continue to think that Rosell, former president of a club that is the great emblem of Catalan pride, he was the victim of the same Spanish nationalist fury who denied the principle of presumption of innocence to the nine Catalan political prisoners. What is clear is that even if they do not foresee the necessary cleansing, the elections this weekend and the Spanish democracy in general, like those of too many Latin American countries, deserve little more than snapping nails.