Catalan Secessionists Suffer Setback in European Court Decision

(Bloomberg) -- The European Court of Human Rights delivered a blow to the Catalan secessionist movement, ruling that in 2017 Spanish judges legally suspended a regional parliamentary session in the wake of a controversial independence vote.

The complaint brought by 76 people living in Barcelona was “manifestly ill-founded” and the Spanish judges’ move was legal, the Strasbourg, France-based human rights court said in a ruling on Tuesday.

“The suspension of the plenary sitting of the Parliament of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia had been ‘necessary in a democratic society,’ in particular in the interests of public safety, for the prevention of disorder and for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others,” the ECHR said in a summary of its ruling.

The October 2017 meeting was planned so that Catalan President Carles Puigdemont could evaluate the result of an referendum on Catalonia’s independence held days before. The Spanish authorities had deemed the plebiscite illegal and moved to block it. The issue remains a raw one in Spain.

Earlier this month five Catalan separatist leaders emerged briefly from jail, where they await trial for leading the 2017 independence move, to take up their seats in Spain’s parliament. The five, including leader of the Esquerra Republicana party Oriol Junqueras, won seats in Spain’s lower house and senate in general elections last month.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hugo Miller in Geneva at hugomiller@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, Charles Penty

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