Pablo Ordaz
6/3/2019 El País
ENGLISH
The statements of Millo and Pérez de los Cobos question the dialogue and pacifist version of the secessionists
A colonel of the Civil Guard (Guardia Civil)* makes an imposing impression, even if he is in civilian clothes, without a tricorn and with a traveling bag in his hand. This is how Diego Pérez de los Cobos, - the head of the combined police forces deployed in Catalonia during the illegal referendum on October 1 -, appears before the court. The defendants watch him entering the Plenary Hall with a serious gesture, except for Jordi Cuixart, who always laughs full-throated, as if he did not know or did not care that the Prosecutor's Office asked for a 17-year prison sentence.
From his first answers, Pérez de los Cobos's witness statement is similar in two very important aspects to what Enric Millo, - the ex-delegate of the Government in Catalonia -, stated in the morning, and what José Antonio Nieto, - the former Secretary of State for Security-, had declared Monday afternoon: the three statements seem credible and the three of them put into question the pacifist and dialogue-driven discourse of the secessionist leaders on the basis of numerous data, dates and first-hand instances of personal experience. As a result, by the end of the morning and for the first time since the trial began, the defence lawyers start to look visibly nervous. To the point that, in the last moments of Millo's declaration, Judge Manuel Marchena has to cut short the interrogation of one of the defence lawyers:
- Let's see, Mr. Van den Eynde. This is a legal debate. It gives the impression that you are contradicting the witness. Do not use irony in that way.
In addition to Marchena, Judge Luciano Varela, the most senior of the seven members of the tribunal, who founded Judges for Democracy in 1983, is visibly upset with the improper attitude of some of the lawyers. Marchena's admonition - and the lunch hour, sacred in the Supreme Court- throws water into the fire, but Pérez de los Cobos’s accurate, serene declaration in the afternoon abound in the same sensation, without him staggering at any time before the logical traps that the defenders try on him: In the eve of October 1 those who sought a peaceful and dialogued solution before the imminent convocation of the illegal referendum were not precisely Carles Puigdemont and his counsellors.
Such an intention is rebutted by the account of the three witnesses of the Security Board meeting held in Barcelona on September 28 under Puigdemont’s presidency. A meeting that for José Antonio Nieto was "surreal", for Enric Millo "ludicrous" and for Diego Pérez de los Cobos "kafkian". Maybe the person who described it best was Nieto on Monday - "we were sitting at a table to prevent the referendum with those who had organized it for October 1st" -. However, Millo contributed in his statement personal details that caused a lot of damage to the defence strategy simply because, whilst Nieto has a Cordovan accent and Pérez de los Cobos is a civil guard, Millo is called Enric and, - as he emphasized -, he has lived in Catalonia all his life. He represents the part of Catalonia, that yes, which did not live those days in the avenues of independence euphoria, but in the alleys of anguish. The Catalonia of all those who opposed the secessionist drift. When the ex-delegate of the Government said that in Girona, - where he has lived 27 years -, there appeared a graffiti saying "Millo, death", a defence lawyer asked:
- Do you know who did it?
-I do not know who did it, but I know who did clean it up: it was my daughter.
There is a sentence that will not make it to any press headline, but which the ex-delegate of the Government repeated twice or thrice at different stages of his statement. The sentence is: "I left that meeting very worried". He refers to the meetings he had with president Carles Puigdemont, Vice President Oriol Junqueras or Home Affairs counsellor Joaquim Forn in order to find a legal alternative to the referendum and which always ended up crashing into a wall. "Their response was always the same," - Millo explains -, "the referendum was going to be held. They were not interested in anything else than having the referendum”.
It's already dark in the Villa de Paris square. Inside the Plenary Hall, Javier Melero, the defence's most seasoned lawyer, has tried unsuccessfully for three hours to find a hole to get to Pérez de los Cobos, but he cannot. The colonel of the Civil Guard, who has been trained in the fight against ETA but also in the advice of ministers of Home Affairs of both the PSOE and the PP, provides a perfect chronological account to support his thesis: the Mossos d'Esquadra favoured the referendum instead of preventing it. Each time the lawyer asks a question in the form of an arrow, the civil guard returns it with poison at the tip:
- Do you know how many complaints there are against police and civil guards for the charges of October 1?
-I have more than 100 dismissals and no convictions.
-And if you say that you were received in the polling stations with violence, is not it surprising that there were no arrests?
-I do not find it surprising. When in a given situation there comes about much higher violence than initially foreseen, the priority is to implement the mission, not to make arrests.
Melero does not know anymore what to ask. A young woman lawyer says something in his ear. In the end, he gives up.
-No more questions.
Pérez de los Cobos smiles.
* Note of the unofficial translator: The Guardia Civil is a military force charged with, a.o., police and safety duties under the authority of both the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Defence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Guard_%28Spain%29
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