La rebel·lió dels tribunals. L’Administració de justícia a Catalunya (1931-1953). La judicatura i el ministeri fiscal

2005. Pròleg d’Antoni Segura i Mas, 320 pp. 

This book will continue to be an important milestone to understand and know better some decisive years of our recent history. The reader will find in the pages a exciting – and passionate – story about issues that are quite familiar and, to some extent, transferable, with all the nuances you want, to a reality of today which, in this sense, still retains ballasts of the past. As an example, it is sufficient to emphasise one of the conclusions that highlights Federico Vázquez. The arrival of the Republic lead to the hidden confrontation of the justice staff with the new regime and it leaders, because ‘the proclamation of the Republic had dismantled the social and political network that sustained it’. The clash was accentuated by the proclamation of the Statue of Autonomy of Catalonia, which implied ‘the transfer of judicial personnel to the Generality’. Moreover, the Republican government’s clearing policy was ‘far-reaching, often misused, and away from constitutional values.’ In Catalonia, ‘the inadequacy of the judicial staff was very evident when asked to join the Catalan culture: the use of Catalan in the administration of justice became the centre of the confrontation between citizenship, legal, professionals and political class, on the one hand, and the civil, on the other.’ It’s as if time had passed in vain.