Llarena issues a national arrest warrant against Clara Ponsatí for not appearing to testify in the Supreme Court for the process

The Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena has issued a national arrest warrant against Clara Ponsatí after the former Minister of Education of the Generalitat during the process has not justified her failure to appear to testify for the crime of disobedience for which she is prosecuted.

The investigating judge of the investigation into 1-O in the Supreme Court affirms that everything indicates that Ponsatí “has voluntarily and unjustifiably neglected the judicial summons” for which reason he agrees to his national detention so that after his arrest he can take a statement. The arrest warrant, recalls the judge, would be without effect if it is presented before the investigator, as has already happened with two other defendants in the process, Meritxell Serret and Anna Gabriel.

Ponsatí was personally summoned to appear before Llarena on April 24. He did not appear in the Supreme Court and his defense justified that Ponsatí was part of two commissions of the European Parliament, one of them as a substitute member. In his order, Llarena explains that, although the aforementioned letter did not specify that Ponsatí's failure to appear was motivated by his attendance at these parliamentary commissions, his defense “suggested the incompatibility of both tasks.”

Llarena's order explains that the law contemplates the possibility of converting a summons into detention when the aforementioned does not justify a legitimate cause that prevents him from appearing, something that Ponsatí has not done.

On the one hand, because the summons -indicates the judge- was for the morning of April 24, while the parliamentary functions that his defense alleges were scheduled for the afternoon of that date, “reasonably compatible by requesting videoconference or even using of the means of communication between Brussels and Madrid”.

Llarena points out that given the early scheduling of his parliamentary activity and also considering the time in advance with which he was summoned for judicial action, “the defense had a wide margin to warn this investigator of the difficulties of the investigated to attend to her political responsibilities and request the readjustment in the summons that you consider necessary. This provision was evaded and it was decided to present an exculpatory document that has not been followed by any proposal to attend the judicial appeal after April 24”.

It adds that this procedural action allows us to appreciate, in view of the rebellion that the investigated has maintained during five years of investigation, “that parliamentary functions are nothing more than the excuse for a new neglect of its procedural obligations.”

The instructor recalls that the researcher herself who, in statements to the media, Ponsatí “boasted that she had no intention of responding to the judicial summons”. And it adds that “this is also the result of the fact that the defendant (who is present in the proceedings and is aware that the investigation of the case is paralyzed due to her lack of an investigative statement), not only left our country immediately after her possible intervention in fact, but that he personally opposed the United Kingdom handing it over to the Spanish judicial authorities to answer for the responsibility that is being dealt with in this process”.

In the last brief of Ponsatí's defense, the suspension of the judicial procedure was also requested for having promoted before the European Parliament a procedure to protect the parliamentary privileges and immunities corresponding to Ponsatí. The judge rejects this possibility, highlighting that the request is based on a ruling of the Grand Chamber of the EU Court that analyzed a situation that is not comparable.