Josep Rull asks the court: Is this trial about ideas or about facts?"

Josep Rull, the former Minister of Territorial Planning and Sustainability, opened his statement by thanking his defence counsels for their work and, in Catalan, by mentioning and thanking his family, "which has suffered and respected my political commitment."

Rull wondered if "this is a trial about ideas or about facts". "What is the reaction of a state with the rule of law - he added - before the democratic challenge Catalonia poses to Spain?"

According to Rull,  "there is a scenario in which politics are denied, dialogue is denied." And with regard to the reaction of a state with the rule of law, he said that "I fear there is a certain tendency to except the system of rights and liberties from it."

The former Minister said "I have faced the music and responded with a clear conscience. I am accused with a manipulated interview that is unworthy of a serious State Attorney General." He also pointed out that 16 years are being asked for him and that "I assume I am being charged with rebellion because I have not renounced my political activity."

He also criticised a television interview to the former minister of Justice, Rafael Catalá who, according to Rull, laid out the terms and deadlines for their suspension as members of parliament and of how the investigation would be carried out.

He pointed out that, in the 1978, the Constitution received the highest level of support in Catalonia. He also pointed out that "Catalan national reality is older than the Constitution" and he wondered if the message of the Constitutional Court with its 2010 ruling on the Statute of autonomy was "If you Catalans feel you are a nation, this is not your Constitution, this is not your state."

The statement closed with renewed references to his family and, specifically, to his children: "They have decided that I cannot see my ten and four year old children grow up. But I have the dignity to defend noble ideas." "Regardless of the sentence they may issue -he added- they will not prevent me from leaving them something extremely valuable: the dignity of having defended legitimate ideas and noble ideas." He closed with his commitment to allow "my children to live in a better country, in a Catalan republic in which nobody will be jailed for defending his ideas."

Related interactive resource: The keys of the Catalan independence trial