Just as we have not normalized the repression of the Catalan independence movement and have responded energetically to the trampling of rights and freedoms, nor must we regularize and treat as normal something which will become frequent from now on: the political prisoners, unjustly convicted and sentenced to prison terms of more than a hundred years in total by the Supreme Court, will begin to experience an improved situation because they have been granted leave to work during the day. They are still prisoners, they are still returning to a jail cell to sleep, they are still subject to strict controls on when they must leave and come back, and outside the jail they have to comply strictly with the provisions of article 100.2 of the prison regulations with regard to a permanent job and additional hours of volunteer work. And that's how it will be, if nothing changes, for many years, for all of them: from the two leaders of civil society organizations - Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez - who are serving the least-long sentences, of nine years, to Oriol Junqueras, sentenced to thirteen years. In the middle are Jordi Turull, Raül Romeva, Dolors Bassa, Carme Forcadell, Joaquim Forn and Josep Rull.
And we, who are outside, feel joy when Jordi Cuixart goes out to work and we see him strong and smiling. This is human, especially since we know that no one has made him retreat even the smallest step from his convictions. He has won the most important battle of them all - that of his own dignity. But a smile should never allow us to forget that he is being unjustly imprisoned and is undergoing an ideological persecution with a stratospheric prison sentence. He gets out of the car to enter his own factory at Sentmenat, 850 days after he entered prison, with the same smile he gave on that October 16th, 2017 when he went to testify with Jordi Sànchez at the National Audience court before judge Carmen Lamela, from where he was taken directly to Soto del Real jail, at which point the ordeal began as well as the realization that the persecution of the independence movement was underway.
But one sees Cuixart and cannot help but think of that emotive composition that singer Raimon dedicated to Gregorio López Raimundo with the title of "I've always known you the same". Raimon recalled the veteran, emblematic communist leader in one of the stanzas as follows: I have always known you the same / grey hair, kindness on your face / fine lips that trace a smile / of a friend, a partner, aware of the danger. And the independence movement will have to proceed with its justified call for an amnesty in one hand and, in the other, the images which some seek to normalize of the nine political prisoners leaving prison to go to work during the day. Let's not forget that they are two sides of the same coin: it's necessary to reach the first goal in order to overcome the second, and, only then, regain the freedom that was stolen.