When the full dossier is put together of all those organisations, institutions and associations that have spoken out against the Spanish government or the country's Supreme Court in protest at the convictions of the pro-independence Catalan politicians, and especially loudly against the nine year prison sentences awarded to civil society leaders Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez, it will be possible to see the true dimension of the abuse which has taken place, something that, as happens with other issues, the day-to-day and the false normality prevent us from tackling properly. The latest voice that has made itself heard is the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), created in 1985 and based in Geneva, and whose secretary-general, Gerald Staberock, has called for the annulment of the conviction of the Jordis because it is "disproportionate", and for the execution of the sentence to be suspended until the Constitutional Court resolves the appeal and the crime of sedition is reformulated.
There are just forty days to go until Cuixart and Sanchez will have spent one thousand days deprived of their liberty. For a few months now, the prison board at Lledoners Penitentiary has granted them leave under article 100.2, thus authorizing them, along with the other Catalan political prisoners, to leave the jail to go out to work. It is by no means an open prison regime, with regard to its conditions on sleeping in their cells and the limits of prison leave, nor is it the prelude to parole, but it has allowed all of the convicted pro-independence leaders to change their situation as they have been able to incorporate the routine of going out to work from prison for a few hours between Monday and Friday. Despite the restrictive nature of this regime, the public prosecutors have not ceased to appeal one by one against of all the concessions under article 100.2, to no avail thus far, as the prisons court has rejected all these submissions, in some cases with a minor admonition for the prosecutors to boot.
The fact that now the OMCT, the largest coalition of non-governmental organizations - a group of 311 from all around the world - which fights against arbitrary detention, torture, summary and arbitrary executions, enforced disappearances and other forms of violence, is insisting that the Spanish Supreme Court's sentence be overturned and that basic freedoms must not be targeted, means that the oil slick of Spain's seriously deteriorating image abroad has spread even further. The World Organisation Against Torture is considered the most extensive network of non-governmental organizations active in the field of human rights in the world and follows a trail that was previously blazed by, for example, Amnesty International.
Spain has sacrificed many things in the fight against Catalan independence, some of which it will either never recover or will take many years to do so. This, we now know, is not of great interest, or perhaps better said, it is of very little interest at all, outside Catalonia. The Spanish state has accepted, almost unfazed, the toll to be paid in the name of the unity of Spain. Even now we are seeing how Civil Guard colonel De los Cobos has been fired over a much smaller issue as head of the force's Madrid command, whereas he came out smelling of roses after the disproportionate police action he led on the occasion of the Catalan independence referendum of October 1st 2017. Interior minister Marlaska and his department say they have lost confidence in him, when the question should be another: how is it possible that they ever trusted him?