Catalan president Carles Puigdemont has this Saturday repeated his intention to not give up despite the offensive by the Spanish state against the independence movement.
"Let it be clear to eveyone: I won't give in, I won't give up, I won't retreat in the face of the illegitimate behaviour of those who have lost at the ballot boxes nor in the face of the arbitrariness of those who are prepared to pay the price of abandoning the rule of law and justice for 'the unity of the homeland'," he tweeted this morning.
This is the first tweet Puigdemont has made since he was taken to Neumünster prison in Germany, his Twitter account being temporarily handled by his team, as announced on Wednesday.
Puigdemont has been in prison since being detained shortly after crossing the border from Denmark. He had been travelling from Finland to Brussels where, according to his lawyers, he was to present himself to the Belgian courts following the European Arrest Warrant issued by Spain's Supreme Court for alleged crimes of rebellion and misuse of public funds.
Since his entry into custody it has emerged that some of his fellow detainees don't understand why he is being held too. According to the director of the Neumünster prison, Yvonne Radetzki, other prisoners "are concerned for him, they take care of him, see he has enough coffee and even say: 'Man, but he's not like us at all, he shouldn't actually have to be here'".
Demonstrations of support
This Saturday afternoon a new demonstration in support of Puigdemont has been organised outside the prison in Neumünster, with another later in Munich's Karlsplatz. Then, on Sunday, another demonstration has been organised for the German capital, Berlin, in front of the Brandenburg gate, the focal point of the city.
Since his arrest last Sunday, a number of protests have been held over the president's detention, whilst the German government has decided to maintain neutrality over the issue of Puigdemont's extradition, to be decided on in the first instance by the public prosecutors and high court of Schleswig-Holstein. As such, they will not use their right to veto the eventual decision of their country's justice system.