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The Supreme Court has confirmed the conviction for the crime of disobedience imposed on the former deputy and former councilor of the CUP in Lleida Pau Juvillà for not removing the yellow ribbons from a window of the City Hall during the electoral period of the April 2019 general elections, despite being required several times to do so by the Electoral Board.
The Criminal Chamber has dismissed Juvillà's appeal against the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) which, in December 2021, sentenced him to half a year of special disqualification from holding elective public positions and a fine of 1,080 euros.
Juvillà was a member of the Parliament when the TSJC convicted him, which led to a battle in the Catalan Chamber because the pro-independence groups refused to remove his seat.
The then president of the Parliament, Laura Borràs, maintained a strong push not to comply with the sentence until it was final, but, finally, the Parliament announced the departure of the deputy in February 2022.
The TSJC ruling considered it proven that Juvillà had in his office at City Hall, on the top floor, a
stelada
and some yellow ribbons since 2017 in protest of the preventive imprisonment of Oriol Junqueras and eight other leaders of the
process
.
In 2019, Ciudadanos councilor Elisa Ribes denounced him for considering those symbols “partisan.”
The then mayor ignored the request of a Lleida judge to remove them until they were confiscated by the police.
The prosecutor then filed a complaint against Juvillà.
In its ruling, for which Judge Juan Ramón Berdugo was the speaker, the Supreme Court highlights that “the appellant used his status, first, as a councilor and later, president of the Municipal Group, to place such symbols in those City Hall offices. , his office on the top floor, officially assigned, violating the duty of political neutrality enshrined in article 50 of the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime” for electoral periods.
Regarding Juvillà's allegation about the violation of his ideological freedom, the Supreme Court points out that "the purpose of the process is not to analyze the appellant's conviction from the perspective of ideological freedom and expression, since as a citizen he is free to make demonstrations or acts that reflect their political identity.
The object is the disobedience of the repeated orders of a constitutional body whose function is to guarantee transparency and cleanliness in the electoral processes that the neutrality of the powers and Public Administrations requires.
“The legitimate exercise of a right,” adds the ruling, “does not constitute a patent so that, under its protection, all acts carried out under the assumptions of the precept can be justified, but rather they must be within the scope of the law.” of their due expression, use and scope, because otherwise they constitute an abuse capable and sufficient to devalue the excuse and to reach a definition of responsibility.
The high court insists that the question raised in the appeal is whether the appellant, as a councilor of the City Council and member of a municipal group, could be required by the Zonal Electoral Board to comply with the agreement that ordered the removal of the estelada and the yellow ribbons, placed from the window corresponding to the office of said municipal group, on the main façade and visible from the outside.
“And the answer must be affirmative,” the court concludes.
Thus, the Supreme Court highlights that "the appellant omits that the display of those symbols - estelada and yellow ribbons, whose political and ideological significance cannot be questioned - did not occur in a partisan act of electoral campaign, elections in which the political formation to which the accused belongs, but permanently in a public office of the City Council.”
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