ERC Secretary General Marta Rovira, ERC Deputy Ruben Wagensberg, Oleguer Serra de Mniun Cultural, businessman Josep Campmajó and journalist Radio Euskadi, Jesús Rodríguez, charged in the exiled Tsunami case, are already at home.
The date for this Friday morning is in Cantallops, Girona, where Wagensberg resides, at 09:00 hours. There will be a political event and a joint working session. Then everyone will have quotes with the groups that have been created for their solidarity. Marta Rovira, for example, plans to meet early in the afternoon at an extraordinary plenary session with the ERC executive, which is in conflict, as well as at the ERC National Council.
On Thursday afternoon a farewell meeting was held in Geneva, Switzerland, at the time of taking the car and before the Catalan media that have come. They've come home about 17:30 hours.
Review of the tsunami case
Although the judicial investigation against the Tsunami Democràtic started in 2020, until November 2023 no terrorist crimes and human rights crimes were put on the table, precisely when the parties of the Spanish Congress were in full negotiation of the Amnesty Law. Following the elections in July last year, the PSOE was unable to achieve a sufficient majority for the formation of the new Spanish government: it needed the support of the Basque and Catalan independence parties. Then, Junts, the party of Carles Puigdemont, made his votes available to the PSOE if the independence leader amnesty and gave way to a new referendum, which has been forgotten. The PSOE then opened up the possibility of amnesty, even though it committed itself in the election campaign not to do so. And hardly, but then he implemented the law – passed at the end of last May.
After the first texts of the Amnesty Law were known, the judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón, who investigated the case against the Democratic Tsunami, placed on the table a crime of terrorism, since these crimes cannot be annulled by amnesty law. Puigdemont and Wagensberg, one of them MEPs and another MEPs in the Parlament of Catalonia, with the emphatic support, were left in the hands of the Supreme Court; but the same, the arguments of the National Court were literally bought by the Supreme.
In this context, last November, the Spanish judiciary charged twelve people for crimes of terrorism and human rights. It was then that Wagensberg, Rodríguez, Serra and Campmajó decided to leave exile. They have been in Switzerland, almost all in Geneva, near where Rovira was – Rovira escaped after the procés of 2017, as did Puigdemont.
The one who has no choice to return is, at the moment, Puigdemont. Although the tsunami case has been archived, the Spanish Justice accuses it of "enriching" itself in the 2017 referendum and in the previous procés, by "embezzlement" of public funds. The Supreme has reviewed the case at the beginning of July, and has pointed out that this crime is not subject to amnesty for anyone. This review of the Supreme Court has been appealed.
Decision to file the Tsunami case
It has been a very special week for the Tsunami case and for those accused in the case investigating the case. This week it's turned 180 degrees, in just a few hours.
First, in the first hour of the afternoon of Monday, the Appellate Chamber of the Spanish National Court considered that the last three years of investigation of the judicial case Tsunami, which had been "illegally" extended out of time by Judge García-Castellón, should be annulled due to a remedy they considered would not go anywhere. This resolution therefore eliminated crimes of terrorism and human rights violations.
Judge García-Castellón has been released after being surprised by the resolution during the holiday period. It could, however, resort to this resolution and lengthen the dispute over time. But in view of the astonishment of many, the defendants in exile have communicated to ARGIA that experienced it, García-Castellón took the decision to file the case on Monday night. However, he did not remain silent and noted in his letter that he sees "signs of terrorism" in the events that occurred in the tsunami on which it occurred.
Those charged in the Tsunami case who remained in exile until Thursday afternoon began to see the return nearby. The day after the decision of Judge García-Castellón, Marta Rovira spoke with determination in the Catalan radio station RAC1: "It's poetic justice. I'm full of excitement. It's a very special moment and it's come unexpectedly." In addition, she assured that this weekend she saw herself in Catalonia because on Saturday the women's assembly of CKD was convened and that her presence in it "would have all the political and symbolic meaning".
Walk from a train station, two friends and a hug. This hug will be frozen until the next meeting. I'll come home, he'll stay there. There, too, will be free the painful feeling that injustice wants us to catch. Jesús Rodríguez (Santa Coloma de Gramenet, 1974) is a journalist,... [+]