Pablo Ordaz
Madrid 8 MAR 2019 - 08:19 CET
Manel Castellví, head of Information of the Mossos, during the session of this Thursday of the trial of the 'procés'. EFE
He sweats, coughs, his voice trembles, stutters frequently, the nervous twitch of his right leg hits the table continuously and shakes the pitcher of water on the table. He is so overwhelmed that when he wants to refer to Joan Carles Molinero he is mistaken and says: "Juan Carlos I". In front of the court sits Manel Castellví, former Chief Information Commissioner of the Mossos d'Esquadra. On Thursday, September 28, 2017, he met with the then president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, with the vice president, Oriol Junqueras, and with the Minister of Interior, Joaquim Forn, to tell them that, according to an intelligence report that burned his hands, on Sunday, October 1, there could be "an escalation of violence" in Catalonia. Castellví fears that the prosecutor Javier Zaragoza, who is questioning him without any pity, is going to ask him at some point if he ratifies that report that bears his signature, but he still does not do it. Zaragoza wants to corner him a little more, and asks him about the lack of will of the Mossos to avoid the illegal referendum:
-Do you know if the Mobile Brigade [the riot section of the Catalan police] acted during the day of the referendum?
-I know it was in Barcelona because at night there was a football match.
-"High risk?", the prosecutor asks with some jest.
-I think it was a Barcelona against Las Palmas.
Not even the apparent moment of distension that takes place inside the Plenary Hall calms Castellví. And when finally come the most feared questions of the prosecutor Javier Zaragoza and the State Attorney Rosa Maria Seoane - "Did you warn about the danger to the top positions of the Government? What did they tell you? What attitude did the Minister of Interior Joaquim Forn take?"- the former head of Information of the Mossos knows that he has no possible escape, that after all he is a policeman and has sworn to tell the truth before the Supreme Court. His answers leave in evidence his three political leaders, the one escaped in Brussels and the other two, who observe him from the dock of the accused:
-The president said that he understood the situation, that he put himself in our place, but that there was a mandate from the people to held the referendum and the Government’s decision was to carry it out. Mr. Forn did not speak at that meeting. He knew what our position was, but in that meeting he was on the side of the president and the vice president... I left the meeting so frustrated.
Everything is becoming now clearer. In view of what was seen and heard in the 13th session of the trial - in which in addition to Castellví declared the top operational heads of the National Police and the Civil Guard - on the eve of October 1, 2017 there were three police forces in Catalonia perfectly prepared for the illegal referendum that was to be held the next day. The fact was that the first of them, the Mossos d'Esquadra, had been prepared thoroughly only for another election day. One of those quiet Sundays where the media news broadcast the typical images of nuns voting and the host says that the only notable incidents are those of a chairman who arrived drunk at school and those of a mountain town where at ten o'clock the ballots had not arrived in the morning. Consequently, the heads of the Catalan police sent to each school a couple of agents - "a binomial" according to the current jargon - and placed them in the door without much on, as if nothing happened. The other two police forces, on the other hand, lived through that dawn in a very different way.
This is what report to the Court both the head of the National Police Sebastian Trapote, responsible for the National Police on the day of the referendum, and Lieutenant General Ángel Gozalo, the head of the Civil Guard in Catalonia during the procés. Both have practically the same to say: that, as Mosso Castellví also perceived, the streets of Catalonia were heating up on the eve of the illegal referendum of October 1. "There was a pre-war language", the Civil Guard said.
So, according to Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos, coordinator of the security device of the three bodies, they made a decision. If the autonomous police complied with the judicial order to prevent the holding of the referendum, they would only act as support. That's what they called "plan A". If, as they had guessed from the previous night and confirmed as soon as it dawned, the Mossos d'Esquadra decided not to act, "Plan B" would be activated and they would take action. Commissar Trapote puts it this way:
-Before eight o'clock in the morning, my information people told me that, as we feared, in the schools there were already many people and the Mossos were not in the attitude of doing anything. I called Colonel Perez de los Cobos, I told him and he said: "Wait now, I'm calling you". When he gave me back the call, he told me: "We put plan B in motion".
In the middle of the afternoon, Judge Manuel Marchena interrupts until Monday the interrogation of Commissioner Manel Castellví. It might seem that the hardest thing has already been done by him: just telling the truth even if it hurts your former political bosses. But looking at the back of the room to Santi Vila, repudiated by his former colleagues and beaten up on social networks, it is quite easy to suspect that the path of the dissident is harder when the sweat cools.
https://elpais.com/politica/2019/03/07/actualidad/1551983832_167909.html
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