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In two or three weeks, the Catalan political prisoners will be transferred to Madrid for the independence referendum trial that is to be held in the Supreme Court. The planning of that trip, the return to a Madrid jail and the preparation of the trial with lawyers has become, already in recent days and much more intensively from now on, the focus of much of the available time for the nine people deprived of their freedom by the Supreme Court. It was agreed some time ago by the prisoners that they would carry out a political defence of their actions, given that, to a large extent, the trial would be a rubber stamp as the verdict was decided many months ago. In fact, it was decided from the beginning of the investigation phase of the case.

It is Europe that will give the ultimate verdict and it seems credible that European justice will correct the many stupidities that have been committed in Barcelona and Madrid courts. But that will take a long time. The trial must serve to expose the lies on which the whole case is based. The events being judged have been rewritten so that all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, but it is important to look ahead. The attitude of the nine prisoners must be the lever that lifts the lid on the inadequacies of Spanish democracy.

Not much attention is being given now to the fact that Spain's three right wing parties - Popular Party, Ciudadanos and Vox - have very quickly decided the new political majority that is to govern Andalusia for the coming years. First, it was Cs who made the discourse of the PP their own and now it is the far-right Vox that has appropriated the lines of the PP and Cs. Something that scandalizes Europe - the emergence of extreme right parties – has been resolved in Spain to generalized applause from the centre and right. It is obvious that the Franco regime never left, but was just dormant.

The referendum trial must also question this Spain, since, in the end, an invisible but very real thread wants to go back to black and white. To make pacts under these conditions is a major retrograde step. And this must be said before it's too late.