Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart will this Tuesday mark one year deprived of their freedom in Lledoners prison, in Bages county, Catalonia. They've been held there since July after spending almost nine months in Soto del Real prison, in Madrid. It's easy to remember them on 20th September 2017 calling for the crowd thronging in front of the Catalan economy ministry on Barcelona's rambla de Catalunya to dissolve and go back home. All the public appearances of the leaders of ANC and Òmnium were always linked to peaceful acts and yet they've been in pretrial detention for a year. So unjust a situation that even Amnesty International, through its deputy director for Europe, Fotis Filippou, has said there's no justification for keeping them in prison and insisted on their immediate release.
We're far, very far, from all that. Even today, on this sad day for democracy which should embarrass anyone who still thinks that Spain is a country under the rule of law comparable with its neighbours, incredible things have happened which could well be ordered as the agenda of the day of easing tensions. We'll list four very notable ones which only allow for one interpretation. Indeed, like unjust pretrial detention, however much they want to whitewash an outrage that president Torra has described as a "kidnapping by the Spanish state", however much newspaper ink aims to whitewash the unjustifiable.
The last from just hours ago: the first broken promise from Sánchez's government after the meeting of the bilateral infrastructure commission. It was the first meeting after eleven years of waiting and the Spanish government disagrees over how to pay the 200 million euros worth of debt promised for 2019. And it was the end of a day with three other resounding examples of the much talked about easing tensions of Sánchez's government. Through La Razón we've learnt that public prosecutors are contemplating a charge of rebellion against former Catalan police chief Josep Lluís Trapero, in line with what they're planning of bringing against the main Catalan political leaders in prison. Mid-morning, we learnt that Manresa's court of instruction number two sees a crime of serious disobedience in the case of Sant Joan de Vilatorrada town councillor Jordi Pesarrodona for not letting Civil Guard into an educational centre on the day of the 1st October referendum.
And after lunch, the High Court of Justice of Catalonia informed that it was summonsing for 6th November, under investigation, Catalan interior minister Miquel Buch and the former president of the Association of Municipalities for Independence Neus Lloveras under the accusation they promoted the referendum among town mayors. Four news stories in, officially, a climate of easing tensions, as the Sánchez government keeps saying.
Of course, there was coup leader and former lieutenant colonel Antonio Tejero relaxing at the Civil Guard's ceremonies for 12th October in Rincón de la Victoria, Malaga. And Franco's remains will go from the Valley of the Fallen to the centre of Madrid, to Almudena cathedral. Anyway. It must have been a bad day.