British broadcaster BBC has reported on the Catalan political prisoners on hunger strike (Jordi Sànchez, Jordi Turull, Joaquim Forn and Josep Rull) and warned that "tensions remain high" in Catalonia.
The article states that "many Catalans resent Madrid's show of force last year, when it charged pro-independence leaders with sedition". It notes that, of these leaders, nine are in pretrial detention and four are on the second week of their hunger strike. "The hunger strikers accuse Spanish courts of deliberately delaying their appeals," the BBC writes.
The BBC says that this is the context in which the Spanish government has announced the possibility of taking direct control over the Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan police, following accusations they "just stood by" during protest actions by the Committees for Defence of the Republic last weekend.
The article also notes that prime minister Pedro Sánchez's minority government depends on Catalan independence supporters, among others, to stay in power and that nevertheless the PM has "ruled out any new Catalan referendum on independence".