Spain was wrong to jail the Catalan separatists

Some things just don’t pass the gut test. Your head tells you they’re right, all the facts point in their favour, but you can’t suppress a dyspeptic rumbling. The jailing of Catalan separatist leaders should give us all political indigestion. On Monday, Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced 12 activists and key figures from the autonomous government and parliament of Catalonia, all of whom helped organise an illegal referendum in October 2017 to secure independence for the Spanish region. Nine defendants, including former ministers and the parliamentary speaker, were jailed for up to 13 years for offences including sedition and misuse of public funds. Three others were fined for lesser offences.

The convicts are being branded ‘political prisoners’ by their sympathisers at home and abroad, but there is no suggestion that their trials were anything but procedurally and constitutionally proper. They have not been jailed for their ideological objectives but for flouting the law to achieve them.