Judge García-Castellón has monopolized the majority of the proceedings, practically with the only exception of those followed against the mayor Josep Lluís Trapero
The ‘process’ that lived in Catalonia in the fall 2017 and the reaction to the ruling of the Supreme Court that the October 14, 2019 condemned their political leaders involved the practice of proceedings and the opening of various legal proceedings in the National audience. This is the case followed by terrorism against members of the CDRof the one related to the financing of Tsunami Democràtic and of one of the commissions that ex-commissioner José Manuel Villarejo allegedly accepted to spy on the honorary ex-consul of Lithuania in Barcelona, very close to the former president of the Generalitat Carlos Puigdemont.
The Central Court of Instruction number 6whose owner in Manuel Garcia-Castellon, is the one who monopolized all these proceedings, practically with the only exception of those followed against the largest Josep Lluis Trapero, former head of the Mossos d’Esquadra, for sedition and which ended with his acquittal and that of the then political leaders of the police force. These are the slopes:
Judge García-Castellón forwarded some of the proceedings opened to the Court of Instruction number 1 of Barcelona for incorporation into Voloh caseamong them, those opened when detecting the presence in that city of agents of unit 29155, of the Russian Central Intelligence Department (GRU), that the ‘New York Times’ linked in a report to serious cases of poisoning in the United Kingdom such as the one that in 2018 killed the ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal And your daughter.
These proceedings differed from others, such as those relating to the collaboration of ‘Russian hackers’ in Democratic Tsunami activitiesbecause the presence and activity of the unit would be unrelated to the independence movement and its contribution to the ‘procés’ would have been due more to the fact that Catalonia was the best asset that Russia found to destabilize Spain, that to be claimed by the independentistas. His activity in the ‘procés’ is thus assimilated to that carried out in other countries, such as with the yellow vests in France.
In exchange for the proceedings opened for the presence of this espionage unit in Barcelona, Judge Joaquín Aguirre remitted to the National Court all the actions that were in his court in relation to the activities of Democratic Tsunami. The Central Investigating Court number 6 still keeps the case in which the financing of the mobilization that occurred in October 2019 through this platform under investigation.
The case, initially opened for terrorism and conspiracy to commit havoc, he highlighted Tsunami’s extraordinary ability to convene from his first tweet against the ‘procés’ sentence. His first objective was to point out Ibex-35 companies, which he considered representatives of the main Spanish economic structures in Catalonia and, therefore, financiers of the supposed repression of the Catalan people. Then came the Occupation and collapse of the Barcelona-El Prat airportacts of disobedience to the Central Electoral Board during the day of reflection of the general elections and the traffic cut of the AP-7 on the border at the height of La Jonquera. Also investigated is the one carried out on December 18, 2019 on the occasion of the celebration of the football match that was played at the Camp Nou between Barça and Real Madrid. An act that culminated in the visualization of the phrase “Spain sit and talk” in the stadium during the match.
Legal sources consulted by EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA point out that the investigation referring to the Catalan CNI never went beyond the series of proceedings proposed by the Civil Guard, and which ended up being included in the investigation against an alleged terrorist cell of members of the Defense Committees of the Republic (CDR). Last October, the judge concluded the investigation of Operation Judas, in which almost a dozen people were arrested in September 2019, and 12 defendants were placed on the bench for membership in a terrorist organization Y possession, deposit and manufacture of explosive and flammable substances or devices of a terrorist nature.
In compliance with the order of the Criminal Chamber of the Hearing, the judge forwarded to the parties the proceedings that formed part of the origin of the proceedings.
The other piece is the one most related to the “Operation Catalonia” of those opened in Spain, taking into account that the Spanish justice system, unlike the Andorran one, has never found evidence of crime in any of the episodes of dubious police practices that could be included in it. After the archive of the piece related to the police records that were made in the Método 3 detective agency, the only one with a certain relationship that is still open is the one related to an alleged order received by ex-commissioner Villarejo to spy on the ex-consul of Latvia in Barcelona Xavier Vinyals, dismissed in 2016 by Foreign Affairs due to his closeness to the independence movement and specifically to the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont.
In addition to Latvia’s honorary consul in Barcelona, Vinyals was president of the Catalan sports pro-selections platform and was arrested in October 2020 in the Volhov case, in which the judge aguirre investigates the alleged diversion of public funds to Puigdemont after he fled to Belgium.