Jordi Sànchez today spent an hour and a quarter denying the charges against him in a hearing to formally inform him of his prosecution. His long testimony heated up at the end when judge Pablo Llarena questioned him directly, Sànchez defending himself vehemently, although without losing respect for the judge, to the point of saying "you cannot be a judge and a victim".
Sànchez was referring to the ruling denying him permission to attend his investiture debate in the Catalan Parliament in which the judge uses the first person plural pronoun. Specifically, he says "the story of the strategy which we're suffering is over".
Legal sources also say that the former president of the Catalan National Assembly and failed presidential candidate told Llarena that "there have always been contacts with the Catalan government and especially with the Interior minister", Joaquim Forn.
Jordi Sànchez made the same plea as Oriol Junqueras and Jordi Cuixart, denouncing the violation of their fundamental rights and, in particular, he called for their political rights, supported by interim measures from the UN, to be respected.
In fact, today, Sànchez, like Junqueras and Cuixart, accused Pablo Llarena of running a political case and putting their ideology on trial. Their lawyers agreed on this point, all today's defence statements showed full-blooded support for the self-determination referendum, the denial of violence and the call for dialogue.