Read in Catalan

Exchange of letters between the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) and the Spanish Socialists (PSOE). If this Tuesday the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, addressed a second letter to the public in which he denounced an intention to influence this Sunday's European elections in Spain through a court summons to his wife as a person under investigation over influence peddling and corruption, now the ERC European representative and candidate, Diana Riba, has in turn responded with a letter (in Spanish) published on social media. "I want to take this opportunity to convey my empathy and that of so many Catalans who understand perfectly what it is to go through the cogs of a justice system that has remained in the pre-democratic era," the letter begins.

Riba asserts that from her own experience she knows the actions of the justice system and that this is the first election campaign she can embark on with "relative normality", given that her partner, former Catalan government minister Raül Romeva, "whom I also love madly, spent 1,221 days in prison for holding a referendum" and adding that of the total number of days that he was imprisoned "33 were under the People's Party (PP) government and 1,188 were under a Socialist government led by you".

Fight against lawfare

Diana Riba explains that she hopes Sánchez does not have to undergo any of the experiences that her family had been through and urges him to "get past the debate about persecution and start fighting against the persecutors", referring to the parliamentary non-legislative proposition (PNL) presented by ERC to recognize the existence of lawfare, which was rejected by the PSOE, PP and Vox in Congress last week. It is precisely because of this refusal of the Socialists that the Republican MEP questions whether the Spanish prime minister's "letters, days of reflection and grandiose phrases against the extreme right were nothing more than a pure and simple spectacle. Because the PSOE is not what it says, it is what it votes for."

The European election candidate concludes her letter to Sánchez by sending a message to voters: "Our horizon remains unchanged: to regenerate democratic life by claiming fair play above the mud that some try to spread, to advance in rights and freedoms without taking a step back, and to allow Catalan citizens to freely exercise self-determination". And she urges the public to take part in this Sunday's elections to "vote to fight against lawfare, fake news and the dictatorship of [Spain's] regime of '78. Vote and act accordingly".