They are still prisoners but they are in Lledoners and Puig de les Basses - in Catalonia - instead of Estremera, Alcalá Meco and Soto del Real. They are not receiving special treatment, but the two highest public-office holders in Catalonia, the president of the Generalitat, Quim Torra, and the speaker of Parliament, Roger Torrent, as well as other members of the Catalan government, visited them as soon as they arrived at the penitentiaries where they are to spend the next few months. The injustice of their imprisonment does not change, the call for their immediate release that has been demanded from the very beginning keeps getting stronger, but Jordi Sànchez, Jordi Cuixart, Oriol Junqueras and Raül Romeva have indeed started to notice that their condition as political prisoners is recognized within the prison. The same as is happening with Carme Forcadell and Dolors Bassa.
At the prisons of Lledoners and Puig de les Basses, a situation as exceptional as it was anomalous was experienced in the hours after their arrival. Members of the Catalan government and parliament and the Barcelona city council would not be entering penitentiary centres, surrounded by television cameras, to give prisoners support, affection and recognition, if we were not immersed in a political situation as brutal as the current one, as emotionally extreme as what Catalonia is going through with its political prisoners. And neither would they take part afterwards in the protest called by the pro-independence civil groups and the prisoners' families to demand that they be set free. Lledoners and Puig de les Basses are, from now on, focuses for the international condemnation of an unprecedented situation of pre-trial prison which in some cases has already lasted for more than eight months, for offences which neither have the gravity asserted in the indictment nor the exceptionality being applied to them by the Supreme Court.
"We are back in Catalonia and we are very happy; the light, in the Mediterranean, is another colour, it seems yellower. The narrative of which we are accused is false, freedom will come", these are the words of Jordi Sànchez on entering Lledoners. "I am very happy to be in Catalonia. With the people I love and who love me. With my people and in my country. But I continue in prison unjustly. Close to home is not at home", said Carme Forcadell on her Twitter account, as she entered Puig de les Basses. “In spite of the thickness of the walls, I can now hear you more clearly. You are unstoppable! Don't give in, because we will never do so!”, was the message of Oriol Junqueras after the demonstration at Lledoners.
It is not special treatment, but rather compliance with the law on transferring prisoners to locations close to their families' residence. There is no reason to say thank you and on the other hand there are reasons to denounce all the breaches that have occurred during these months of the independence leaders' civil and political rights. We should expect judge Llarena to facilitate the speedy transfer to Catalunya of Jordi Turull, Josep Rull and Quim Forn, the three political prisoners who have not yet arrived. And we must keep on demanding their release, a sine qua non for resuming a minimum level of normality in politics.