supreme court

Catalonia’s Supreme Court (TSJC) has announced the indictment of Daniel Fernández, a Member of the Catalan Parliament and Organisation Secretary in the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC). Fernández has resigned from his party and Parliamentary positions, but he will continue to be an MP while waiting to find out whether he will go on trial in the end. The High Court believed there to be signs that Fernández could have committed a felony of influence peddling by participating in the irregular hiring process of a manager in one of Greater Barcelona’s municipalities. The anti-corruption prosecutor and the judges investigating the so-called ‘Mercuri’ case, dealing with municipal corruption in Greater Barcelona mostly affecting members of the PSC, asked for Fernández’s indictment to the TSJC since he is an MP.

The Spanish Supreme Court has rejected an appeal presented by one family against the Catalan Supreme Court’s decision adopted in March last year that validated the current public school model of linguistic immersion. The Spanish Supreme Court has stated that the Catalan Government does not have to change the entire Catalan school model, which has been in place since the early 1980s. However, it does have to consider individual petitions from families wanting to school their children in Spanish and make Spanish the language of instruction “in the proportion that the Catalan Government considers to be convenient” in “the school and class in which the offspring of the petitioner is being taught”.

After holding the second high-level meeting with top representatives from all the public powers involved in the fight against corruption and fraud in Catalonia, the Catalan President, Artur Mas, presented a document setting out a list of measures. The document takes into account suggestions and comments by all the attending public powers, but it is not a joint text issued by all the participants, Mas emphasised, as it is only signed by the President of the Catalan Government. An initial meeting was organised on the 6th of February to exchange views and gather ideas. The listed measures relate to transparency, public contracts, judicial capacities, political parties, control bodies and democratic regeneration.

The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, organised a summit with top representatives from all the public powers involved in the fight against corruption and fraud to exchange ideas and come up with a set of measures. Political parties were not invited and some of them have protested. After the meeting, Mas explained that the attendees agreed to transform the Transparency Agreement from 2001 regarding the funding of political parties into a law in order to enforce it. Furthermore, the Catalan Government will allocate more resources to the judicial powers investigating the main corruption cases. The attendees agreed to compile the initiatives discussed in a document and meet again in two weeks’ time.

The President of the Catalan Government and leader of the Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Coalition (CiU) is organising a summit to define new initiatives against corruption. The meeting will be held next week and will gather together the main representatives of the Catalan Parliament, the Supreme Court of Justice of Catalonia, the Catalan Ombudsman, the Catalan Court of Audit and the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia. Political parties are not invited, as the summit is thought to be “complementary” to Parliament’s actions. The Catalan President will ask the attendees to provide him with ideas so that he can channel them and put them on the table for a wider debate. In the last few months, many corruption scandals have affected politicians in Catalonia and the rest of Spain.

The highest Catalan court has clarified how to execute the sentence of the Spanish Supreme Court that had recognised the right of 3 families to school their children in Spanish and not in Catalan. These families will have their individual rights respected, but the current school model will not be changed. Catalonia’s education model has been validated twice by the Spanish Constitutional Court and has been in place over the last 30 years, guaranteeing full knowledge of both official languages –Catalan and Spanish– by all its pupils. Experts advise that the current school model prioritises the weakest official language –Catalan- following the principles of equal opportunities and social cohesion. The model has been praised by UNESCO, the European Commission and the European Parliament.

The French newspaper ‘Le Monde’ published an article in December 2006 that falsely linked FC Barcelona with doping practices. A first trial condemned ‘Le Monde’ to pay 300,000 euros to the Catalan sports club, but the French newspaper and the journalist Stéphane Mandard appealed. A second court reduced the fine to 15,000 euros, but they appealed again. The Spanish Supreme Court has upheld the last sentence and dismissed the French newspaper's appeal.

The Catalan Government appealed the order of the Catalan Supreme Court, which insisted that the Catalan school system should be modified in order to comply with the Spanish Supreme Court’s sentence from last December to include Spanish as language of instruction. With the Government’s appeal, the Court’s deadline is automatically suspended, until the Court decides on the appeal. The appeal is based on two sentences from the Spanish Constitutional Court validating the Catalan school model, as well as on the linguistic immersion principle which guarantees social cohesion and equal opportunities.