ALIVE

On Sep­tem­ber 20, 2017, Span­ish Civil Guards raided the Cata­lan Min­istry of the Econ­omy, search­ing for ma­te­r­ial re­lated to the in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 1st. A spon­ta­neous demon­stra­tion started out­side the build­ing around 9am. Later that day, when there were around 40,000 peo­ple out­side the Min­istry, Jordi Sànchez, the then pres­i­dent of the grass-roots Cata­lan Na­tional As­sem­bly, and Jordi Cuixart, pres­i­dent of what is now the world’s sec­ond largest cul­tural as­so­ci­a­tion, Òmnium Cul­tural, stood on the roof of a Guardia Civil pa­trol car parked in front of the Min­istry and made a cou­ple of short speeches. Later on, they asked the crowd to dis­perse (there is video footage of Cuixart doing just this). Not long after, they were charged with vi­o­lent re­bel­lion and sedi­tion and on Oc­to­ber 16th, 2017, they were im­pris­oned on re­mand with­out bail. Hav­ing spent sev­eral months in a Madrid pen­i­ten­tiary, in July of this year they were fi­nally trans­ferred to one in Cat­alo­nia, as close as pos­si­ble to their homes (as pre­scribed by Span­ish, Eu­ro­pean and in­ter­na­tional law). Re­cently, a del­e­ga­tion of Scot­tish and Welsh MPs from the West­min­ster All Party Par­lia­men­tary Group on Cat­alo­nia, vis­ited Cuixart at Lle­doners prison, near Man­resa (I was the in­ter­preter).

The di­rec­tor ush­ered us into a meet­ing room (a hand­ful of chairs, grey walls). Jordi, a lit­tle late as he had had to clean up after pot­tery class, fi­nally bounced into the room and shook every­one’s hands as cor­dially as if we’d dropped round to his flat for a drink and nib­bles. Once we were all sit­ting more or less com­fort­ably, a mem­ber of the del­e­ga­tion asked him how he was. From the an­swer, we learnt that he was happy to be in jail, be­cause he had re­ceived so much sup­port in the form of let­ters from thou­sands of or­di­nary cit­i­zens and from artists in all fields both in Cat­alo­nia and from abroad (he was es­pe­cially pleased to get a let­ter of sup­port from Ken Loach, of whose films he was an un­con­di­tional fan); that even when he was sad - which hap­pened es­pe­cially when he thought about his part­ner and their in­fant son - he was happy, be­cause he knew it was im­pos­si­ble to be happy with­out the pres­ence of some sad­ness; that he made the most of the pos­i­tive things that came his way, such as the one and a half hours he could spend with his son per week, or con­ver­sa­tions such as the one he was hav­ing with us; that in Madrid, the war­dens had tried to keep him away from the other in­mates but he had in­sisted that he be among them and be treated like one of them, be­cause human con­tact is both es­sen­tial as well as in­ter­est­ing; that the Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence move­ment wasn’t eth­nic, given that 70% of Cata­lans came from other parts of Spain, like his Mur­cian mother; that the as­so­ci­a­tion he pre­sides over should bear in mind that Cata­lan cul­ture and Cata­lan in­de­pen­dence are two sep­a­rate is­sues and should not be con­fused; that his part­ner, the cul­tural jour­nal­ist and poet Txell Bonet, had done so much to in­ter­na­tion­alise the sit­u­a­tion of those in jail and exile, and that by way of sup­port when not vis­it­ing him in jail, she used a se­cret sig­nal in her TV ap­pear­ances to tell him that she loved him; and that he ex­pected, when he fi­nally went to trial, that he would be sen­tenced to decades of jail time be­cause the judges were not bas­ing their charges on any kind of re­al­ity but on a wish for vengeance against all the cit­i­zens who sup­ported in­de­pen­dence, by using him and the oth­ers as a scape­goat; that he wished the MPs would do what they could to let the world know about this. The del­e­ga­tion left im­pressed, as­tounded, out­raged and de­ter­mined to com­ply with his re­quest. The trial against Jordi is due to start in No­vem­ber.