Catalan separatists’ trial: Spain’s ex-PM Rajoy set to testify

MADRID: Spain’s former prime minister Mariano Rajoy, in power when Catalonia’s executive tried to secede, will testify on Wednesday in the trial of separatist leaders in a highly sensitive hearing just months before elections.Rajoy governed Spain from 2011 until he was ousted in June last year by a no-confidence vote over a corruption trial that hit his conservative Popular Party (PP). He was replaced by socialist rival Pedro Sanchez.The 63-year-old is due to appear in court at 4:00 pm local time (1500 GMT). Before him, Catalonia’s former separatist president Artur Mas gave evidence as a witness. Mas stepped down in January 2016 before the secession bid but was close to those who led the attempt.He criticised Rajoy’s government and its decision to send police to stop people from voting in a banned independence referendum on October 1, 2017. Images of the clashes were broadcast around the world."I said (at the time): ‘do you really think that the state will be so unintelligent to do something that will harm it directly with regards to its image in the whole world?’," he told the court. "I confess I was wrong because that was the option, and I think it was a completely unnecessary option."Critics accuse Rajoy of having fuelled pro-independence passions in Catalonia, with support for separatism in the northeastern region leaping from 10 percent of votes in 2010 to 47.5 percent in 2017 -- much of it under his mandate.Even before he came to power, Rajoy had campaigned as opposition leader against a new, agreed status for the region that gave it extra powers and defined it as a "nation" within the Spanish state. The Constitutional Court eventually overruled that nationhood claim, fuelling pro-independence passions."His appearance is very important because he headed" the country before, during and after Catalonia’s regional government attempted to break from Spain in October 2017, said Paloma Roman, politics professor at Madrid’s Complutense University."As a witness, he has to tell the truth." It "won’t leave anyone indifferent," she said as political debate becomes increasingly virulent ahead of snap general elections on April 28 and European, municipal and regional polls in May.Rajoy’s appearance "may be a key and dramatic moment of the trial," said Joan Botella, politics professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He "will try to reject any responsibility" but "will have to respond to the question: why did he never sit down to talk" to the separatists? "Rajoy didn’t do politics, he resorted to the law," said Fernando Vallespin, politics professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid.He said Rajoy was "always turning to the Constitutional Court to put a brake on the separatists’ initiatives." "The left criticises him for not having tried to resolve the problem politically" and "the right for not having acted sooner" against the separatist movement, Vallespin said. Prosecutors are seeking seven to 25 years jail for the 12 Catalan separatist leaders and activists. They are being tried for pushing an independence referendum in October 2017 in defiance of a court ban, and for a subsequent short-lived declaration of independence on October 27.

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