As every day since the Supreme Court's verdict was released, sentencing the nine political prisoners in Lledoners, Mas d'Enric and Puig de les Basses to between nine and 13 years, a couple of hundred people have this Sunday blocked avinguda Meridiana between 8 and 10pm. This has gone on for 56 nights, some very calm and others, like last week, with the Mossos d'Esquadra's Brimo units trying to prevent the protest on an important main road in and out of the city of Barcelona.
The one on the Meridiana is the only daily action against the Supreme Court's sentence which has continued uninterrupted since 14th October, since other actions carried out by the CDR on other access roads are much more sporadic. And the great movement led by Tsunami Democràtic reserves its capacity for action for efforts of enormous media impact, like the one it's planning to carry out on the 18th of this month during the Barça-Madrid football match to be played that evening in Camp Nou. Some 10,000 people had already signed up by early last week to take part in the day of mobilisation, details of which are currently unknown.
The protests on the Meridiana and those from Tsunami Democràtic are, ultimately, two faces of the same coin of the organised Catalan civil society reluctant to give the unjust legal situation up for forgotten. It's not easy. The Meridiana assembly debated this Sunday evening how to continue its protest and not been taken up, and domesticated, by the everyday nature of a simple gathering authorised and directed by the authorities, where demonstrators become simple witnesses of a roadblock previously set up by the Mossos. Meridiana Resisteix ("Meridiana resists"), as the daily action is known, is trying to avoid routine devouring it, the system assimilating it, as another scheduled interruption of those the city sees on a daily basis. It's not easy.
Next week it will be two months since the verdicts. Bit by bit, the independence movement, or an important part of it, has absorbed the blow of the verdict and accepted the harsh sentences. The fight with protests is now also about avoiding falling into resignation.