Opinion
Cause célèbre
Mark Nayler
...politicians, who in October 2019 received sentences of up to thirteen years for organising the 2017 independence referendum. Yes, they broke the law in holding a vote declared illegal in advance by Spain's Constitutional Court; but a hefty fine or a lengthy ... expulsion from politics would have been more in proportion to their crime than over a decade behind bars. After all, former Catalan president Artur Mas, who in 2014 also orchestrated an illegal independence referendum, was fined 36,500 euros and banned from