What was, for some, a warning, and for others, a threat by Spain's Supreme Court has been enough for the treatment boards at the Catalan penitentiaries where the pro-independence political prisoners are held to stop them from spending the coronavirus confinement period in their homes. This decision is quite surprising when several Spanish prisons have already sent prisoners home who, like the jailed Catalan politicians and civil leaders, are under a second-level security regime and have been granted work permission outside the jail. Moreover, no judicial ruling was needed by the high court to ensure a negative result, but rather just a brief note in the media last Tuesday after Catalan justice minister Esther Chapel opened the door in a radio interview to their home confinement.
After the Supreme Court's sentences which sent the prisoners to jail for a total of many decades, it is no exaggeration to believe that the court's warning to officials that they might be committing malfeasance by such a decision had its emotional impact within the justice ministry, which is, after all, the department that has to deal with the decisions that are taken. "Someone got scared," said jailed former minister Dolors Bassa, currently held in the Puig de les Basses penitentiary, in the Alt Empordà county.
The fact that, also on Thursday, the lead figure in the Council of Europe's report on the Catalan political prisoners, the Latvian MP Boriss Cilevics, requested that Spain move the prisoners into the home isolation to prevent the spread of the virus in prisons, based on the fact that they do not pose a threat to anyone, is proof, yet again, of the behaviour - in this case, indirect if you like - of Spain's disturbing brand of justice. Nor has anyone heeded the words of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, who called for the release from prison of the least dangerous prisoners, and explicitly, of the Catalan political prisoners.
The UN and the Council of Europe are not just any old organisms, although they might seem to be in Spain due to the zero attention that is given to them, and no doubt this affair is not yet over. The pro-independence leaders in prison have already sent letters to both agencies denouncing the discriminatory treatment they have received from the prison authorities and the consequences this has for them. And the answer will arrive. Of course it will arrive.