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Amid on-going discussion of the Catalan independence movement's strategy and debates among its leaders which often lead nowhere, the civic movement that gives them support demonstrated in the street on Saturday that it is not particularly interested in tactical gestures and partisan interests. Over a hundred thousand people, 110,000 according to the Barcelona police, marched through central Barcelona calling for the release of the political prisoners and the return of the exiles. And once again, they displayed the muscle of a movement which even on a Saturday in July is capable of making a peaceful, multitudinous rejection of the injustice of the legal cases that are being pursued against the pro-independence leaders and have deprived them of their liberty.

In a week deeply marked by the setback which German justice has given to Spanish judge Pablo Llarena and, by extension, to the institution of the Supreme Court, the public prosecutor, the political parties that implemented article 155 and the Spanish monarchy, this Saturday's mobilization once again increases the pressure for the immediate release of the political prisoners. Spain has lost its battle for the charge of rebellion, invented as a way of sustaining the political and media discourse which had been propagated and which, finally, led to the suspension of the Catalonia's government and its autonomy.

Today the pantomime which made all that possible can be seen with absolute clarity. Taking away Catalonia's autonomy and attempting to get rid of a whole political generation via judicial means. Charging the leaders with misappropriation of funds for the referendum was not thought to be enough; in any case, little evidence has been found to support it and the Spanish government says it did not occur. To teach the desired lesson, an attempt was made to construct a legal case, which, after the German pronouncement, is indefensible.

Because of that, the Supreme Court prefers to stand fast and go to trial with only those who are in prison. The prosecutors on the case also feel it would be a humiliation to be forced to reduce the sentences they are demanding.

To those who argue that we already have too many demonstrations and expressions of solidarity with the prisoners, it must be said that until the situation of those who are in prison and in exile is not remedied, we cannot have too many. And that it is on the street that the independence movement always finds the strength that escapes it. That the movement is not anybody's property: not the parties, nor the civil groups; not the moderates nor the radicals; not the pragmatists nor the adventurers. It belongs to everyone, except for those independence supporters who don't want to be there.