Formerly exiled CUP politician voluntarily testifies at Supreme Court

Anna Gabriel, the former CUP politician who had been living in exile in Switzerland, has made a surprise return to Spain, voluntarily appearing before the Supreme Court.

She is one of the politicians wanted by Spanish authorities for her role in the 2017 independence push, and had spent years studying a Ph.D. in Switzerland, before making an unexpected return on Tuesday morning. 

She left the country in February 2018, just months after the Catalan referendum and unilateral declaration of independence, arguing that she would not get a fair trial in Spain. Many other high-profile Catalan politicians left at the same point, including the president at the time of the independence vote, Carles Puigdemont. 

Gabriel is now the second formerly exiled politician to return voluntarily, after former minister Meritxell Serret did the same in March 2021 after living in Belgium for years.

Accompanied by her new lawyer, Íñigo Iruín, who also accompanied the return of Serret, Gabriel has decided to return to Spain and put and face the charges against her. She is accused of the crime of disobedience, which does not carry imprisonment, and will therefore be released pending further legal proceedings.

Prosecuted in March 2018, she was held in contempt of court in July of the same year for failing to show up to testify. No continental arrest warrants were put out for her, as she was only accused of disobedience which did not carry jail time. Her appearance in court on Tuesday was to regularize the judicial proceedings against her for contempt of court, and she will soon be summoned again to testify for her original disobedience charges.