It's hard to find words we can publish to explain the enormous disgrace entailed for a member of the European Union by images such as those of Jordi Sànchez, obliged to offer his press conference, authorised by the Central Electoral Commission, from Soto del Real prison in front of an enormous Spanish flag and a photo of king Felipe VI. Behind a tiny table, which barely fit his legs and the few sheets of notes he'd got, the flag and photo weren't coincidental. They looked to humilliate someone who has been unjustly deprived of their freedom for 550 days already and who doesn't accept the flag or the head of state as his own. Something, on the other hand, that's very easy to understand even if many resist accepting it.
We've seen and endured images which aren't very different from these when exceptional events with hostages and kidnappers have occurred. We all have one which, for one reason or another, sticks in the darkest and most painful part of our memory. Seeing Jordi Sànchez like this (or Oriol Junqueras this Friday) makes you retch and is absolutely scandalous. But it's also to be denounced, since only silence does more harm than the attitude of a state which has turned repression of the independence movement into something permanent.
The Spanish state, whether it's aware of it or not, has prepared the staging of a political prisoner, even if it resists describing Jordi Sànchez as such, like the other independence supporters unjustly imprisoned in Soto del Real and Alcalá Meco. The attempt to humiliate the defeated behind a desk is a boomerang for those who don't understand or want to understand that Catalonia can no longer be managed as it has been in recent decades. It will be hard to get millions of Catalans to forget this image just like that and for many of us to not feel incredibly close to those who are turning their prison into a small refuge for their longing for freedom.