Forcadell & Cuixart take on the state

Member number 36,080 of Omnium Cultural, and its president, Jordi Cuixart, took on the Spanish state in the Supreme Court today, defending basic rights such as the right of Parliament to debate any topic, and the rights to free speech, and demonstration. During the sessions in which they were questioned by prosecutors, a further 1,500 new members signed up to Omnium Cultural.

Whilst Cuixart’s powerful voice evoked the Spanish republican “no pasarán”, the man in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or Rosa Parks in the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Forcadell proclaimed “words are free, and Parliament ought to be free to debate anything”. Cuixart told the room he was a “political prisoner, not a politician in prison”.

Cuixart came out fighting, and warned the tribunal that he was not the same man who made declarations in front of Judge Pablo Llarena on the 11th of January 2018. “My statements to Judge of Instruction Llarena were connected to a desire to get out of prison at all costs. I am a political prisoner however, and my priority is not, now, to get out of prison, but to resolve the conflict between Catalonia and the state.

Forcadell, former Speaker of the Parliament of Catalonia, was interrogated in the afternoon, and the prosecution accused her of disobedience, in that she had a “duty to prevent” anything related to the 1st of October referendum, including the plenary sessions on the 6th and 7th of September, or the vote on the unilateral declaration of independence later in October. Forcadell said “what the Constitutional Tribunal ruling demanded was that the Speaker of Parliament and Cabinet become an organ of censorship, which we could simply not allow”, which angered the prosecutor visibly.