mayor of berga

Pro-independence radical left CUP’s Montse Venturós, Mayor of Berga, a small village 80 kilometres from Barcelona, has been arrested this Friday by the Catalan Police, the Mossos d’Esquadra. Venturós will now have to testify before the judge over an alleged electoral crime for refusing to take down pro-independence flags from the façade of the Town Hall on the 27th of September, the day of the Catalan Elections, and on the 20th of December, that of the Spanish Elections. Indeed, Venturós has twice refused to testify before the judge for the same case. CUP have already expressed their disapproval of the arrest and have called on members to demonstrate before Berga’s court in support of Venturós. Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, who has been lately accused of ‘disobedience’ for allowing the pro-independence roadmap to be put to vote in the Catalan Chamber, has also expressed her support for Venturós, via Twitter. “Neither the judicialisation of politics nor the court will impede that Catalans decide their future”, she said. For his part, the Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, stressed that “freedom of speech is not a crime”.