The TS declares the jurisdiction of the TSJC to prosecute former counselor Puig for disobedience over Sijena's assets

Instructs the Catalan court to decide whether it is appropriate to assume the facts attributed to Vila, who is also a former counselor

MADRID, 4 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Supreme Court has declared the competence of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to hear the case against the former Catalan Minister of Culture Lluis Puig -one of the fugitives from the 'procés'-- for the crime of disobedience to the judicial authority in relation to the transfer order of certain works of art from the National Art Museum of Catalonia to the Monastery of Sijena in Huesca.

In an order dated December 20, collected by Europa Press, the Criminal Chamber of the high court resolves the matter of jurisdiction after receiving a reasoned statement from the Criminal Court Number 1 of Huesca last October and establishes that it must Being the TSJC itself the one that decides if it agrees to his prosecution and that of the also former Catalan Minister of Culture Santi Vila.

The facts have their origin in the sentence handed down on April 8, 2015 by the Court of First Instance 1 of Huesca, which decreed the full nullity of the sales carried out by the Generalitat between 1983 and 1992 and by the National Museum of Art. of Catalonia in 1994, declaring that the ownership of the goods corresponded to the Order of San Juan of the Royal Monastery of Sijena.

In 2019, the Court of Huesca issued an order to open an oral trial against Puig and Vila in this case, arguing that he had lost jurisdiction due to the acquisition by the former of the status of deputy of the Parliament of Catalonia in March 2021.

The Huesca court considered that the jurisdiction should go to the Supreme Court, since it was an autonomous deputy accused of a crime committed outside of Catalonia. In this sense, he defended that disobedience should be understood as committed in the place from which the omitted court order came, that is, in Huesca.

For its part, the Prosecutor's Office supported that the competence belonged to the Supreme Court, since the crime was not committed in Catalonia, although it did not agree that the place of the crime was the one in which the inattentive judicial order was issued, but rather the place where the defendant should have deployed the conduct omitted, in this case, the town of Villanueva de Sijena (Huesca), because it was there where the 44 pieces that were the object of the judicial requirements had to be transferred.

In any case, the Public Ministry assured that, since the conduct would have been committed outside of Catalonia, the jurisdiction for being registered would also fall to the Supreme Court.

However, the high court dismissed both arguments and recalled that the crime of disobedience must be understood as committed in the place where the subject omitted the conduct concerned by the order that he decided to disregard. In this case, the Chamber considers that the conduct omitted by Puig in his capacity as a member of the Catalan autonomous government, "would have occurred in the territory of Catalonia."

"In which he himself carried out his relevant functions regardless of whether, undoubtedly, the final destination of the goods that he had to send, as he would have been ordered, was another (in this case, Villanueva de Sijena)," the order states.

The court adds that the former counselor, "for full compliance with the order received, should have given, in turn, according to the accusations, the necessary instructions for said transfer to be fully carried out." "And it is there, in the place where he performed his duties, where he would have stopped executing the conduct that was imposed on him by the judicial order," he argues.

The Supreme Court concludes that the competence, as it is a regional deputy and the acts have been committed in Catalonia, belongs to the Catalan Superior Court of Justice, which is also entrusted with deciding whether, for reasons of connection, it is appropriate or not for it to take cognizance of the facts that are attributed to the other defendant in the same case, the also former Catalan Minister of Culture Santiago Vila.

The alleged crime of disobedience attributed to them, recalls the Supreme Court, refers to the fact that the defendants would not have responded to, or even obstructed, the decision of the Court of First Instance and Instruction Number 1 of Huesca by which they were ordered, in their capacity as members of the Catalan regional government, transfer certain works of art from the National Museum of Art of Catalonia to the Monastery of Sijena.