A change of course in 2017
Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas (Barcelona, 1961) experienced a turning point in September 2017. The 1-O referendum was approaching and the Government had many questions about the possible criminal repercussions that the promoters of the query Cuevillas, Professor of Procedural Law, was called to Palau to resolve the doubts of Junts pel Sí councillors. He didn’t know it yet, but that was the beginning of a career as a reference lawyer in the process.
From defense in the courts to candidacy for Parliament
That experience led him to enter the world of politics and to end it – for the time being – this Tuesday, when he announced to the Junts parliamentary group that he was resigning from the minutes because he could not combine the work in the chamber with that of his office , located in the upper part of Barcelona. He had made the decision weeks ago – in a chance meeting in Parliament he told the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès – and his colleagues observed that his attendance in the chamber was becoming less and less frequent. Formally integrated into the hard core of Laura Borràs, Cuevillas was one of the few Junts leaders who had defended pragmatism with facts.
A gesture of coherence that drove him away from the table
The most prominent example is when she left the Parliament table – where she arrived at the express request of Borràs when she was elected president of the chamber, after the Catalan elections of 2021 – because she did not agree with processing resolutions related to the king or in favor of self-determination. “Should we allow them to disqualify us without shame or glory for something stupid?”, he asked in an interview with Vilaweb. This sentence is, possibly, the best summary of the career of a long-distance professional – there are prestigious criminalists in the city who remember him as Jaime and with a bracelet of the Spanish flag on his wrist -, dean of the Col ·lawyer between 1997 and 2005, and skilled at combining laurism and pragmatism.
His connection with Puigdemont and Borràs
The meeting in Palau in September 2017 was the first step to get to the front line, where it was consolidated at a time when politics was narrated more from the courts than from the parliaments, in force as was the repression. As Carles Puigdemont’s first lawyer, he had a great media presence, accompanied by a simple but rigorous language, with a fine sense of humor -both in public and in private-, and at the same time he also assumed the first section of the defense of Junts political prisoners. It was in the National Court, for example, on the day they imprisoned half of the Government that chose not to go into exile. Also in the first steps of Puigdemont’s Belgian adventure, when he managed not to be extradited.
Over time, however, he lost prominence in favor of Gonzalo Boye, the ubiquitous Chilean lawyer who can both present appeals before the European justice system and negotiate amnesty with the PSOE. The poison of politics grew on Cuevillas, who aspired to be a Junts MEP and ended up settling for running in the 2019 Spanish elections, first for Girona and then, in the repeat elections, as number three of Borràs for Barcelona. The trip to Madrid made him establish ties with the now president of Junts, and was key for him to appear in the primaries to accompany her in the candidacy for the Generalitat in 2021. He came third in the internal vote, a sign of its popularity.
A charismatic character with a sense of humor
A popularity that was already evident at the rallies, where he spoke with an ironic smile of the JACS effect, an acronym for his initials, and which a large part of the audience in attendance equated with that cologne ad with a latex dress and a zipper as protagonists He presented books accompanied by ex-president Quim Torra, was requested in the territory to give talks and, on designated days, he could be seen wearing a yellow tie and, during the pandemic, a mask of the same color. Once he resigned from the Parliament table, his influence gradually decreased, but he continued to have it over the group of deputies close to Borràs. Cristina Casol, now in the mixed group, had been heard in the corridors saying that she voted “what Cuevillas said”.
A farewell that reflects the moment of the process
The departure of one of the star lawyers of the process also illustrates the moment the process is experiencing, disoriented after achieving a 52% majority that has not been operational and strangled by the skewed relationship between ERC and Junts. Cuevillas, who often lavished himself in the media, no longer went out as much for the simple fact that the world that catapulted him – the fight against repression – has also faded away. In recent weeks his colleagues missed him in Parliament, and he even missed the Christmas dinner of the Junts group. It was only a matter of time before he let it go.
