The nine imprisoned Catalan pro-independence leaders, who were pardoned by the Spanish government, began this Wednesday to leave the prisons where they were serving sentences, after the Supreme Court ordered their release.
All of them left shortly after 10:00 GMT (5:00 am) the prisons where they have remained for more than three years, among them, the former vice president of the Catalan regional government Oriol Junqueras who, along with five other convicts, left prison with a banner with the slogan “Freedom for Catalonia” and a pro-independence flag.
Upon their release from Lledoners prison, some 70 km from Barcelona, they were received there by a hundred supporters shouting “independence!” and by the Catalan regional president, Pere Aragonès, who embraced them one by one, reported AFP reporters.
Junqueras was sentenced to 13 years in prison and another 13 years of disqualification for sedition and embezzlement.
At his side came Jordi Sánchez and Jordi Cuixart, leaders at that time of two powerful associations that packed the streets with demonstrators in favor of the independence of this Spanish region. Both were the first to enter prison, on October 16, 2017.
“Until the day of victory we will continue working with all the people of this country, without excluding anyone, to make the dream of a Catalan republic come true. Long live free Catalonia!” Junqueras said as he left, speaking from a platform.
“We will not accept any silence in exchange for any pardon,” Jordi Sánchez claimed shortly before.
Slogans such as “Thank you for so much dignity!” or “you are our pride”.
At the same time, the former president of the Catalan Parliament Carme Forcadell and the former member of the regional government, Dolors Bassa, left their respective prisons for women.
“I am here because the sacrifice they have made for Catalonia and for all of us has been very great. It is a way of thanking them,” Ignasi Solé, a retired mechanic who traveled almost 100 km to Lledoners, told AFP.
The Supreme Court sentenced the nine to sentences of between 9 and 13 years in prison in 2019, and this Wednesday ordered their release, after the pardon granted on Tuesday by the Spanish government.
The pardons only affect those convicted by the Supreme Court and cannot be applied to former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont or to the rest of the politicians who have fled from Spain, because they have not been prosecuted.
A measure lashed out by the right-wing opposition but with which Pedro Sánchez’s left-wing executive wants to promote “dialogue” and “concord” in Catalonia, where separatists systematically denounced the imprisonment of their leaders for considering them “political prisoners.”
The pardons are individual, partial and reversible if those affected again commit a serious crime punishable by more than five years and in addition, the disqualification penalties to exercise public office or work in official bodies are maintained.
The secessionists demanded an amnesty, which would have implied totally erasing the crimes committed, a measure that for the Spanish government was unacceptable in a democratic regime.
In recent months, the nine had nonetheless enjoyed numerous permits to see their families or work.
How to overcome the division in Spain
Sánchez justified the measure on Tuesday for reasons of public utility given the need, given the need to reestablish coexistence and harmony within Catalan society and the whole of Spanish society.
“Generosity and respect are the path we have chosen. And we hope that those hundreds of thousands of Catalans who are represented by the pardoned politicians will also choose this same path,” Pedro Sánchez wrote this Wednesday
“The sooner we are able to overcome the division, the sooner we will be able to dedicate all our political energy to improving the real life of citizens,” added the Socialist leader, who after the summer plans to resume a negotiating table with the Catalan government, where the independentists want to include Junqueras.
Before the table meets, Pedro Sánchez will receive Pere Aragonès in Madrid on June 29, the government reported.
After the granting of pardons, Aragonés, on Tuesday valued the measure of grace granted by the Spanish government, but again demanded “amnesty” and an “agreed referendum” on the independence of that autonomous Spanish region.
In an institutional appearance in Barcelona, Aragonès admitted that the pardons are a step that “helps to generate credibility in the path of negotiation and the agreement to resolve the Catalan conflict”, although for this the “all repression” against the independence movement must cease. .
The Catalan government, he said, will devote “all its efforts to make possible this new stage in which negotiation, politics, must be the space to resolve a conflict that has been entrenched for too long.”
“It is time for amnesty and the right to self-determination. It is time for an agreed referendum. It is time for the solution that generates more internal consensus, that ensures international endorsement and that guarantees an inalienable social cohesion,” he proclaimed.
The president of the Catalan government stressed that the pardons do not resolve the situation of the “exiles”, alluding to the independentistas who remain abroad fleeing from the Spanish Justice.
One of the independence leaders, Raül Romeva, sentenced to 12 years for his role as head of Foreign Affairs of Catalonia, said that the region will continue its fight for self-determination.
“By pardoning nine people, they are not going to hide the repression that they continue to exercise against hundreds of independentistas. We will not abandon the fight: amnesty and self-determination!”, Romeva posted on his Twitter account.
At a press conference in Madrid, the spokesperson for the Spanish government, María Jesús Montero, was convinced that by maintaining the penalty of disqualification from holding public office and that the pardons are reversible, the illegal independence process of October will not be repeated. of 2017, for which those now pardoned were sentenced to between nine and thirteen years in prison for a crime of sedition.
In addition, he stressed, the Spanish government will not allow anything outside the legality that the independentistas intend or propose. Montero pointed out that the executive “is not going to call a referendum in Catalonia for self-determination nor is it going to allow a unilateral declaration of independence.”
The biggest political crisis in Spain
The secession attempt was the biggest political crisis in Spain in 40 years and had as strong moments the holding of an illegal self-determination referendum on October 1, 2017 and the unilateral proclamation of independence in the Catalan Parliament on the 27th of that month, which it was not recognized by any country.
Despite the prohibition of justice, the Catalan government, then chaired by the independentista Carles Puigdemont, organized on October 1, 2017 a referendum on self-determination, marked by scenes of police violence.
On the 27th of that month, the Catalan Parliament unilaterally declared independence, to which the then conservative Spanish government responded by dismissing the Catalan executive and placing the region under guardianship.
Pursued by justice, the secessionist leaders fled Spain, like Puigdemont, currently an MEP, or were arrested, like the then Catalan vice president and leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), Oriol Junqueras, today pardoned.
Puigdemont and his former advisers Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí, now members of the European Parliament, pointed out that “partial pardons” should be understood “as a response (…) to calls from the international community.”
In a letter to their colleagues in the European Parliament, Puigemont, Comín and Ponsatí alluded to a resolution adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, in Strasbourg, which asked Spain to “consider abandoning extradition requests against Catalan politicians living in the outside”.
The Spanish justice accuses Puigdemont and Comín of sedition and embezzlement, and Ponsatí only of sedition.
The right wing, which took out in Madrid on June 13 tens of thousands of people against the pardons, accuses Sánchez of seeking to stay in power, since his minority government needs the support of the independentistas in Congress.
The measure is rejected by 53% of Spanish citizens, according to a recent poll, which on the contrary showed that 68% of Catalans approve it.
In a context in which Spain breathes due to the fall in infections as the anticovid vaccination advances and with the next national electoral appointment in two years, the Sánchez government intends to resume shortly the dialogue table with the Catalan executive, paralyzed in February of 2020 for the pandemic.
With information from AFP and EFE
