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Catalonia’s top lawmaker has been jailed for sedition by a Spanish judge following the autonomous region’s “unconstitutional” independence vote, with bail set at US$175,000.
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Parliament Speaker Carme Forcadell, whose passport Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena ordered to be confiscated, is being held in custody as part of a rebellion probe launched in response to Catalonia’s bid to split from Madrid.
Spanish prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against several members of the Catalan parliament, which was disbanded by the central government after separatist lawmakers declared a new Catalan republic on October 27.
Lawyers familiar with the proceedings said Forcadell had sought to avoid custody by saying that the independence declaration was “declarative and symbolic,” the Washington Post reported.
The judge, rejecting prosecutors’ requests to jail all the defendants without bail, released four additional lawmakers on bail set at $29,000 each and to be paid within a week. A sixth, who had opposed the declaration of independence, was released without bail.
“All the accused... have expressed that either they renounce future political activity or, those that remain active, will do it renouncing any actions outside the constitutional framework,” the judge wrote in Thursday’s ruling.
Eight members of the now-dismissed Catalan Cabinet and two activists have already been jailed on similar provisional charges. Ousted separatist leader Carles Puigdemont and four of his ministers are currently fighting extradition to Spain from Brussels.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, meanwhile, has said he hopes voters “meet their obligations as Spaniards and Europeans” when a regional election is held in Catalonia next month.
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