Christmas in prison

It’s Christ­mas Day and the nine po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers are still in prison. And, what­ever the fake news cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial media says, they aren’t re­ceiv­ing any spe­cial treat­ment. For ac­tivists Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez, and for the for­mer Cata­lan vice pres­i­dent Oriol Jun­queras and the for­mer in­te­rior min­is­ter Joaquim Forn, this will be the sec­ond Christ­mas spent in cus­tody. In 2017 they spent Christ­mas at Es­tremera prison, just out­side Madrid, and now they are at Lle­doners, in Sant Joan de Vi­la­tor­rada. Carme For­cadell, the for­mer speaker of the Cata­lan par­lia­ment, is to spend her first Christ­mas be­hind bars at Mas d’Enric; so too is the Cata­lan min­is­ter for em­ploy­ment, so­cial af­fairs and fam­ily, Do­lors Bassa (at Puig de les Basses), and the ex-min­is­ters Josep Rull, Jordi Tu­rull and Raül Romeva, who have been in mod­ule 2 at Lle­doners since the four politi­cians on hunger strike re­turned to Lle­doners last night after five days at Ter­rassa hos­pi­tal.

This De­cem­ber 8,404 peo­ple are in prison, of whom 1,394 are in pre­ven­tive cus­tody, that is to say, await­ing trial, like the po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers. Over Christ­mas more peo­ple ask for (and ob­tain) tem­po­rary re­lease, but only pris­on­ers who have al­ready com­pleted a quar­ter of their sen­tence, who have good be­hav­iour, and who have as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­ity for civil li­a­bil­ity are el­i­gi­ble.

Being in­car­cer­ated can be de­hu­man­iz­ing, and is par­tic­u­larly hard to bear over Christ­mas. Cata­lan po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers will also be see­ing in the new year be­hind bars. They deny the se­ri­ous ac­cu­sa­tions of re­bel­lion laid against them hav­ing never opted for vi­o­lence, how­ever, it doesn’t seem likely that they will be ac­quit­ted by the cur­rent supreme court.