There are four days left until the trial against Jordi Pujol and his family for the treasure hidden in Andorra begins. Four days for the former president of the Generalitat to appear via videoconference before the judges of the National Court who will have to decide whether or not he is fit to testify and continue the trial, after the forensic report commissioned by the court concluded that he is “not capable” of facing it. Pujol has been hospitalized in the Sagrada Familia Clinic since last weekend due to pneumonia, but the former president’s personal doctor, Jaume Padrós, explained in an interview with SER Catalunya that this Friday he will be discharged and will be able to return to his home. “If there are no obstacles, tomorrow you will be discharged and will be able to return home,” Padrós explained in the program. Here is Catalonia of the station.
The departure from hospital will allow Pujol to undergo a court evaluation this Monday before the start of the trial. Padrós assures that the former Catalan president “does not have the dialectical capacity” to face the judicial process under conditions. “Talking about something that needs reasoning, that needs dialectical resources, to be situated in time, to argue, to have dialectical capacity… definitely not (it has no capacity),” said the former president of the Official College of Doctors of Barcelona.
Padrós is one of the doctors who signed one of the three reports on Pujol’s health that the former president’s defense presented to the National Tribunal to ask that it be assessed whether he was fit to face trial. The court accepted the request and commissioned the assessment of forensic experts, who reached the same conclusion. This is why Padrós appears “surprised” by Monday’s appointment, because this latest sentence has ratified what has already been highlighted by the parameters of the defense doctors. “I can understand it from a legal point of view,” the doctor added.
Pujol, 95 years old and already suffering from a stroke in 2022, has been hospitalized since Saturday afternoon for pneumonia and lung infection. Last week, at the request of his lawyer (Cristóbal Martell) and by order of the court that will try him, a team of medical examiners went to the former president’s home to examine his state of health. The conclusions of this study have already been sent to the National Court. Forensic experts point out that, in addition to not meeting the conditions to face trial, Pujol does not even possess “the procedural capacity necessary to be able to defend himself in a self-sufficient manner”.
