Boya accuses the National Police of overacting by leaving CUP headquarters on 20S

Former CUP Member of Parliament Mireia Boya has stated that, on 20S, the National Police withdrew with unnecessary precautions from in front of the CUP party headquarters.

In her testimony, which was requested by the defence counsels of Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez, she explained that she arrived there together with Eulàlia Reguant and Gabriela Serra and spent nearly 8 hours at the spot:

"What the three of us did was sit in front of the entrance of the headquarters of our political party, exerting the methods and tactics of civil disobedience before an event that was later demonstrated to be fully illegal, as they did not have a court order to enter the headquarters of a political party, which I deem to be extremely serious in a democracy."

 

The Policía Nacional withdrew "without any incidents" 

Boya has ensured that a "crisis legal team" was created for what she has described as "an offence against the rights of the CUP party". She also said that, when it ended up leaving, the Policía Nacional overacted:

"The Policía Nacional withdrew towards 8 PM or 8 and something PM without any incidents. Neither did I understand why, when retreating, they had to fire a few salvoes, when the 3,000 people present were there in a calm and festive manner, many of them sitting on the ground, others dancing, and others simply waiting for them to withdraw."

The witness explained how she experienced 20 September 2017: first she went to the gathering in front of the Foreign Affairs building at Via Laietana in Barcelona, followed by the Economy building, after which she went to the CUP headquarters towards midday and, finally, back to the Economy building.

Boya explained that, the first time she went to the Economy building she reached it without any issues and that she issued statements to the press there towards 11 AM.

 

The Guardia Civil patrol cars were "badly parked"

The witness stated that the famous Guardia Civil patrol cars, which she described as "badly parked", already had a lot of journalists on top of them:

"I gave these statements to TV and radio journalists who were on top of the buildings the Guardia Civil had left parked at the entrance of the Economy building, and there were perhaps thirty or so journalists on top of those two badly parked vehicles."

 

 

The cars, "a good grandstand"

Boya explained that, when she returned there in the evening, there were no longer any journalists on top of the cars, and that she and Eulàlia Reguant decided to climb on top of them to address the people gathered in Rambla de Catalunya, who could not hear the megaphones of the stage that had been erected at Gran Via:

"We discussed it with Eulàlia Reguant and we decided to climb on top of the roof of one of the two Guardia Civil vehicles as it would be a good grandstand to address the people gathered, the gathered mass, to remind them that we should always maintain a peaceful attitude, that protests had to be made from a position of non-violence and that it was important to maintain that because we precisely believed that this police intervention was seeking the exact contrary effect."

According to her, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart were the ones who had asked them to address the people, because it was a concentration of young people and they felt they would pay more attention to them.
 

She opposed calling off the demonstration

Boya later explained, when the judicial committee had already finished its job, that Sànchez and Cuixart suggested that they should call off the demonstration, but that they opposed that idea:

"Both Eulàlia Reguant and I opposed it at first, we said that we were not entitled to call off the people, who were freely exerting their right to protest, their right to demonstrate. We lacked that power, despite being public office holders, we could not call off the people and tell them to go home."

Finally, they demanded that a time and place be established for a demonstration the following day to continue the protest as a condition to support calling off the demonstration.

 

The defence counsel of Jordi Cuixart, Marina Roig, interrogating Mireia Boya in the Supreme Court on Monday

 

Marchena: "Please ask another question"

Boya only answered questions from Marina Roig, the defence counsel of Jordi Cuixart: Jordi Pina, the defence counsel of Jordi Sànchez, who had also requested her testimony, declined to ask any further questions, as did the parties to the prosecution.

The tale of the witness in answer to Roig's questions was quite detailed, and the president of the court, Manuel Marchena, reproached this to the defence counsel and asked for "another question" several times.

Boya gave her statement next to her attorney, who did not have to intervene. At the beginning Marchena reminded her that, being under investigation from the High Court of Justice of Catalonia due to the separate case of this process, she was not obliged to answer all questions.