The “right to decide” in International Law as grounds for exclusion of unlawfulness

It is impossible not to notice that the entire secessionist process has been based on the existence of a "right to decide", convincing the population that this right is protected under international law. Likewise, albeit with some qualifications, from the outset of the trial, all the defendants argued that the so-called "right to decide" is one of the rights referred to in the grounds for exclusion of unlawfulness provided for under Article 20.7 of the Spanish Criminal Code. 1 It was a question that the Supreme Court had to resolve, and it does so in section 17.1 (pp. 198 to 223) of the judgment (pp. 194 to 218 of the English-language version), 2 inquiring into the existence of international, constitutional or statutory foundations, beginning with one undeniable fact: the expression "right to decide" is non-existent in both international legal texts and the 1978 Spanish Constitution [CE] and Catalan Statute of Autonomy. The following paragraphs will review the analysis of its lack of foundation in international law. 3 The Court begins with the defendants' arguments concerning this right. Because the expression is not reflected in the law, they attributed a political nature to it, whereby the right would be based on a supposed democratic principle, namely, the right of every community to decide its own future. For the Court, the "right to decide" is a euphemism used to explain an "evolved conception" of the right to self-determination contained in Article 1 of the International