Man accused of aggression against authority for protesting against Spanish judge at restaurant

Police have charged a man with aggression against authority for protesting outside a restaurant where the Spanish judge who sent pro-independence leaders to jail for rebellion was having dinner.

The man was arrested on Thursday morning and released later on in the day after he refused to speak to officers at the police station.

On July 28, judge Pablo Llarena was having dinner in the Catalan town of Mont-ras, in the northern coast, when a local branch of the pro-independence Committees in Defense of the Republic (CDR) shared a picture of the judge via Twitter.

When he left the restaurant, a group of protesters started shouting at him. Police escorted him and his companions out of the area.

The CDR called a demonstration in Palafrugell, next to Mont-ras, to denounce a detention that they deemed as “disproportionate" and an attack against “freedom of speech.”

Llarena, a judge at Spain’s Supreme Court, indicted 25 Catalan leaders for their role in the independence bid, including former president Carles Puigdemont and his ministers. Nine people are in pretrial jail accused of rebellion, while seven left the country to seek refuge abroad.