BARCELONA — Off a leafy boulevard in Barcelona sit the headquarters of Omnium Cultural, a corporation recognized in Spain as a lot for its literary prizes as for its dreams of an independent republic in Catalonia.
But its president, Jordi Cuixart, is nowhere to be discovered: For the final three and a half years, he has lived in a jail cell.
To the Spanish authorities, Mr. Cuixart is a harmful prison, convicted of sedition for main a rally at a time when he and different separatist leaders have been seeking to set up a breakaway state in the northeastern region of Catalonia. Yet to his supporters, and within the eyes of many overseas nations, he’s a political prisoner sitting within the coronary heart of Europe.
“They want us to change our ideals,” Mr. Cuixart stated, talking by a thick pane of glass within the jail guests’ part on a latest afternoon.
More than three years have handed because the Catalonian independence motion almost tore Spain aside, and the politicians in Madrid have seemingly received. Plans for secession are largely useless. The sound of pots banging, which had been a fixture of the motion, isn’t heard at night time now in Barcelona.
But Spain’s leaders, now consumed with battling the coronavirus pandemic, nonetheless have a political drawback. To many, Mr. Cuixart and eight other men jailed for sedition at the moment are martyrs who, in response to human rights teams, are being held for nothing greater than voicing and performing on their political opinions.
For the Spanish authorities — and for Europe as a complete — they’ve additionally turn into a diplomatic headache, elevating accusations of hypocrisy in opposition to a area recognized for demanding better democratic freedoms around the globe.
Russia this yr cited the Catalonian inmates to deflect calls from Europe for the discharge of Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition chief. The United States lists the prisoners in its human rights report on Spain and calls their jailing a type of political intimidation.
Even lawmakers within the European Union, which Spain is a member of, have raised their plight. When the bloc mentioned holding Hungary and Poland accountable to E.U. rule-of-law requirements, some European parliamentarians famous a double customary: Spain, they stated, held political prisoners.
The jailings stem from a longstanding battle, nonetheless unresolved, over id, language and who has the proper to rule in Catalonia, a area of seven.5 million individuals on the border with France.
In 2017, Catalonia was plunged into chaos when its leaders tried to carry a regional independence referendum in defiance of the Spanish courts. The nationwide authorities in Madrid sent in riot squads, which seized poll bins and even beat a number of the voters.
Separatists claimed victory anyway, even supposing more than half of voters did not cast ballots and polls confirmed that Catalonia was cut up on independence.
Defiant, the Parliament in Catalonia went forward and declared independence anyway — solely to droop its personal declaration earlier than being dissolved by the Spanish government. By that point, Mr. Cuixart had already been arrested and different separatist leaders fled for Belgium.
In 2019, the courts sentenced Mr. Cuixart and eight others to between 9 and 13 years in jail after convicting them of sedition.
“He is in jail simply for exercising his right to express himself,” Esteban Beltrán, who heads the Spanish workplace of Amnesty International, stated of Mr. Cuixart.
Arancha González Laya, the Spanish overseas minister, stated that this case introduced painful reminiscences within the nation of different independence actions, together with the killings by the terrorist group ETA, which fought for many years for the independence of the northern Basque area.
“They aren’t political prisoners. These are politicians that have broken the law,” Ms. González Laya stated in an interview.
“The question is, do you have in Spain the ability to express a different opinion? Answer: Yes. Do you have the right to unilaterally decide that you break up the country? No,” she added.
But David Bondia, a global legislation professor in Barcelona, stated that the Spanish authorities was contemplating an overhaul that might weaken its sedition legal guidelines, one thing he sees as an admission that there had been a mistake in jailing the separatist leaders.
Mr. Cuixart’s case was much more problematic from a authorized view. He was the top of a cultural group, but his sedition trial was carried out beneath a authorized framework reserved for politicians, Mr. Bondia stated, elevating due-process questions.
For Carles Puigdemont, the previous president of Catalonia who led the referendum push, the scenario recollects the times of the Franco dictatorship, when political opponents lived in worry of persecution.
“For us, this has hit hard and brought us to the past,” he stated.
Mr. Puigdemont, who can be wished on sedition costs, fled Spain in 2017 for Belgium, the place he serves within the European Parliament. But his parliamentary immunity was removed in March, permitting for him to be extradited.
The shadow of Franco performed a position within the early days of Omnium, the cultural group that Mr. Cuixart would go on to steer.
It was based in 1961 by a group of businessmen to advertise the Catalan language at a time when the Spanish authorities forbade its use in public. Shortly after, Francoists closed Omnium and the group went underground.
When Mr. Cuixart was rising up on the outskirts of Barcelona within the Nineteen Eighties, Franco had died and lots of vestiges of his regime had lengthy been swept away. But Mr. Cuixart nonetheless noticed an intolerance towards his tradition.
There was Mr. Cuixart’s identify, for one. His first identify, Jordi, was the Catalan identify of the area’s patron saint, St. George the dragon slayer. But in official paperwork, Mr. Cuixart was registered with the Spanish identify Jorge, a widespread follow within the nation, which had forbidden registering Catalan first names.
“They saw difference as a threat,” he stated.
Mr. Cuixart was swept into the world of Catalan letters by an uncle who owned a bookstore that was quickly recognized for its literary salons crammed with poets and political figures. The ambiance was “a creative hurricane,” Mr. Cuixart stated that might encourage him for many years.
As a younger man, Mr. Cuixart plunged into the world of enterprise, first working in Barcelona factories, then saving to open one in every of his personal. After his profile as an entrepreneur started to rise, he joined Omnium in 1996.
The group had grown since its clandestine days into a key power in Catalan tradition. It revived the Night of St. Llúcia, an after-dark literary competition in Barcelona that had been banned by Franco, and gave out the St. Jordi Prize for the perfect novel written in Catalan.
Omnium additionally reawakened the nationalist emotions that Mr. Cuixart had felt as a teenager.
“Being Catalan was more than a language and a bloodline,” he stated. “It was a decision to live here and to be here. This is what made you Catalan.”
In 2010, Spain’s courts threw out a constitution that granted broad powers for self-government, 4 years after it had been approved by voters and the regional Parliament. The transfer introduced widespread anger and separatist flags grew to become widespread within the countryside.
Soon, Parliament was discussing a transfer to declare an unbiased state, lengthy thought-about a pipe dream of radicals.
Mr. Cuixart, who by 2015 had turn into the president of Omnium, was generally conflicted that his group had additionally joined the independence push — it was a cultural group in spite of everything, not a political one. But in the long run, he stated that not becoming a member of would have been standing on the flawed aspect of historical past.
The essential day got here for Mr. Cuixart on Sept. 20, 2017, when the Spanish police, attempting to cease the independence referendum from going down, had stormed a Catalan regional ministry constructing on suspicions that plans for the vote have been being organized there. But a big crowd surrounded the situation.
Mr. Cuixart and a pro-independence chief, Jordi Sánchez, tried to mediate between the protesters and the police. They arrange pathways by the group for officers to enter the constructing and made bulletins that anybody contemplating violence was a “traitor.”
As the night time wore on, Mr. Cuixart stated that he had feared violent clashes. In a recording, he’s seen on high of a automobile calling for the group to disperse. Despite jeers from the protesters, most left and Mr. Cuixart stated that he then went to mattress.
The vote was held amid the crackdown the subsequent month. But Mr. Cuixart recalled an earlier act of civil disobedience when there have been no penalties after he dodged a army draft as a younger man. He thought he had little to worry this time round.
But then the costs got here: sedition, one of many highest crimes in Spain. Such draconian costs for exercise at a protest shocked even authorized specialists who stated that the sedition legal guidelines — which cowl crimes much less severe than full-out rise up — had been not often utilized in a nation.
“I had to look up what ‘sedition’ even was,” Mr. Cuixart stated.
Mr. Cuixart now spends his days on the Lledoners jail, a penitentiary constructed for about 1,000 inmates, and residential to convicted drug peddlers and murderers. He stated he spends his afternoons meditating and writing letters.
Jordi Cañas, a Spanish member of the European Parliament who’s in opposition to Catalan independence, stated he felt little pity for Mr. Cuixart’s scenario as a result of the separatists introduced it on themselves.
“I don’t forgive them because they’ve broken our society,” Mr. Cañas stated, including that the independence push nonetheless divided Spanish houses. “I have friends I no longer speak to over this.”
Mr. Cuixart, for his half, stated he was not asking for forgiveness. He would do it over again, he stated. It was Spain that wanted to vary, he stated, not him.
“At some point, Spain is going to have to reflect and ask themselves, ‘What are they going to do with me?’” he stated. “Eliminate me? They can’t.”
Leire Ariz Sarasketa contributed reporting from Madrid.
source https://infomagzine.com/criminal-or-martyr-a-prisoner-poses-a-political-dilemma-for-spain/
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