GERARD MATEO – 29/11/2019
Manuela Carmena, jurist and former mayor of Madrid, has again marked distances with independentism in her appearance in the commission of study on civil and political rights of the Parliament, where she has been invited by the ERC deputy Ernest Maragall.
Among other things, Carmena has defended the guarantees of the trial of the process as well as the Constitution and the legality in an intervention in which she has warned, before beginning, that “it is not pleasant to listen”. In addition, she has revealed that she transmitted to the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and former vice president Oriol Junqueras that the celebration of 1-O was “an impressive mistake.”
The reform of the Constitution
The former mayor of Madrid has also distanced herself from the working group on arbitrary detentions of the UN – to which Carmena belonged between 1994 and 2009 – which in May criticized the situation of the imprisoned independence leaders. In any case, she pointed out that the advisory opinions of that working group are “interesting for reflection”, but also that they have “thick lines” and “weak” when they refer to “procedures on which a trial is held with all guarantees and with a sentence. “
Carmena has discussed with Maragall and other deputies of JxCat, CUP and Catalunya in Comú Podem about the drift of the process and its judicialization, with the message that it is legitimate to pursue independence, “but without breaking the laws.” Therefore, she has advocated to amend the 1978 Constitution always through the legal systems provided. No constitutionalist party has participated in this commission.
The ‘procés, forged in the Administration
The judge has also remembered her stage as an anti-Franco fighter and defended the importance of convincing through majorities and the peaceful way “without taking short paths.” On the contrary, she has warned that not complying with legality “may be a moral option”, but “implies consequences”. That is why he put Puigdemont and Junqueras on notice weeks before the illegal 1-O.
Along the same lines, she has opined that the process is an organized movement from the Catalan Administration to achieve the separation of this from Spain, thus decoupling it from a phenomenon arising from activism. In any case, she has been in favor of the “dialogue” and convinced that the situation will be overcome, “because it was also possible to get out of the Basque Country crisis where ETA was and was more difficult”.
The “interpretation” of the Constitution
Regarding the violence in the street unleashed after the sentence of the procés, in the second half of October, Carmena has given the reason to the deputies in which it is necessary to investigate, if they occurred, possible acts of police overreach, but has requested that the same reflection and criticism is made for the case in which the activists threw pavers at the heads of the agents.
At the end of the session, Maragall has transmitted some discrepancies and his regret that “the State plays with having a monopoly on deciding what is illegal or not” and has indicated that in his opinion everything that happened in Catalonia was constitutional according to his ” interpretation “of the norm. Carmena has replied that the Constitution cannot be opened to “interpretations” outside of homogeneous reading “because for example the extreme right could say now that according to its interpretation, throwing those born outside Spain is constitutional.”
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