Former parliamentary speaker Carme Forcadell and ex-government minister Dolors Bassa returned to their prison to sleep on Tuesday night knowing that they would not be released again this Wednesday after the prisons judge overturned their Level 3 open prison regime. With this decision, the nine Catalan political prisoners - the other seven had already had their Level 3 regime withdrawn on March 9th - have lost the opportunity to leave the penitentiary during the day and return there to sleep at night. The decision of judge Jesús Ignacio Moncada comes in response to an appeal by the public prosecutors, the body that Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez made clear depended on him in an election campaign, and whose direct superior, as Attorney General, is María Dolores Delgado, in turn a former Socialist justice minister in the previous government. The state maintains its pressure without any possible encouragement to the redirection of the conflict and unresponsive to the low profile of the independence movement which even helped Sánchez win the no-confidence motion against Mariano Rajoy and then to become new prime minister.
The Spanish government which proclaims itself "the most progressive in history" has ignored the problem, even if some show that they feel offended by this (Podemos) while others (PSOE) wear it openly, as if they were the PP or Ciudadanos. In the court resolution on Forcadell and Bassa, the judge again states that, in his opinion, the two Catalan prisoners have not modified their criminal conduct, since they continue to consider that the actions for which they were convicted do not constitute a crime. And that it cannot yet be guaranteed that the goals of “re-education and resociabilization” have been met. After so much time under an imprisonment which is unjust and unworthy of democracy, they still consider that the goals of re-education and resociabilization have not been met.
Forcadell and Bassa had a mesage for the people who went to farewell them at the gates of the Puig de les Basses and Wad-Ras prisons, where they are serving their sentences: that they keep it up. It is certain that those who feel permanently challenged by this injustice will indeed keep it up. Just like those who, election after election, trust in the pro-independence parties so that they feel more and more empowered, in the sense of, for example, being able to point to the 74 seats they won out of 135 in Parliament, and a popular vote which easily exceeded 50%? That is also keeping it up. On the other hand, the other side also keeps going without the slightest easing of its repression and is constantly searching for new cases to open against the Catalan independence movement. Because behind the supposedly amiable face of the Spanish government is the entire system of justice at all its different levels digging into the past to undermine any hypothesis of agreement. No action is futile in a state permanently on the defensive and willing to wipe out its opponent by whatever means.
It is an unequal struggle: on one side the people keep going, and on the other, so do the powers of the Spanish state. And, in the midst of all this, the daily life of a political situation in Catalonia which is complicated even in the efforts to form a government. Perhaps a new scare from the state will pull them out of their current mire.