Catalan president Quim Torra and the speaker of the Catalan parliament Roger Torrent led a large demonstration in Barcelona on Saturday evening, calling for the release of the Catalan political prisoners. "We came out onto the street today and we will do so as many days as necessary until the prisoners are free and our people are too," said Torra at the start of a protest which attracted 110,000 people according to Barcelona city police - or 200,000, according to the organizing groups: Òmnium, the ANC and the Catalan Association for Civil Rights (ACDC).
Together with the calls for the release of the 9 Catalan political prisoners and the return of the political exiles - all either facing or wanted by Spain for referendum and independence process charges - the demonstration also had a strong tone of more general Catalan demands with chants of "Freedom" and for the "Unity" of the independence movement, which the crowd repeated insistently to the political leaders at the head of the march. "Not one step back" and "We won't forget the 1st October" were frequently-heard calls.
The protest, called under the slogan "Neither prison nor exile, we want you home" was marked by this week's significant decision by German justice: the court in Schleswig-Holstein hearing the case for the extradition of Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, demanded by Spain, only agreed to extradite him for the crime of misuse of public funds, rejecting that there had been violence in the independence process and, therefore, not supporting the Spanish charges of rebellion for which the nine pro-independence politicians have been held in prison for many months.
Torra asserted in statements made before the march that the German decision had exploded the "fictional narrative" which the Spanish state has used "to construct a rebellion."
"Spain must peer into the mirror of its injustice, and this indecent justice that means that we still have political prisoners. Every minute that our prisoners are in prison and not at home with their families and friends is an authentic political indecency and we will not allow it," he said.
The protest began at 7pm in Barcelona's Eixample district, and headed uptown to the entrance of the city's Model prison. Before the starting of the march, CDR (Committee for Defence of the Republic) groups had closed themselves into the emblematic prison, which closed a year ago and which the City Council intends to use as an historical memory centre.
At the head of the march, apart from Torra and Torrent, were other members of the Catalan government and pro-independence MPs, Barcelona deputy mayor Gerardo Pisarello, and relatives of prisoners and exiles, including Carles Puigdemont's wife Marcela Topor.
From the stage at the end of the gathering, the president of the civil group ANC (Catalan National Assembly), Elisenda Paluzie, spoke of the prisoners and exiles, but also of others: those who have suffered reprisals, local mayors and teachers who have been investigated by the police. She said that the democratic separation of powers has been violated and the sending of people to prison preventively has been an abuse.
"We will persist until they are all free. And we will fight until we are all collectively free and have a Catalan republic where they can never again violate our rights and repress dissent," she said.
The ANC president referred to the prisoners as "hostages", an expression also used by Marcel Mauri, speaking for Òmnium Cultural, another of the organising groups. The Omnium leader directed words in Spanish to Spain's prime minister Pedro Sánchez, calling him to move from empty proclamations to actions, to instruct the public prosecutor to immediately drop all charges against the prisoners and exiles and "remove politics from the prisons and the courts." "Stop the repression machine which this state has become," he demanded.
Mauri insisted that there will be no plea-bargaining-type deal made with the prosecutor's office because "the prisoners are not brgaining chips for anything."
Accompanied by the prisoners' families on the stage, Meritxell Lluís, wife of jailed minister Josep Rull, spoke on behalf of the ACDC group. "Now more than ever we must be one sole people, united in diversity and in defence of civil rights and human rights," she declared.
"They won't shut us up and we will continue giving a voice to all those who faced reprisals because we are not afraid. Dignity cannot be locked behind bars. We haven't ever felt alone because we are not alone," she said.
The daughter of minister Jordi Turull, Laura, read a statement signed by all the prisoners held in the two Catalan prisons of Puig de les Basses and Lledoners, reiterating their "irrevocable commitment in defending social cohesion, democracy and individual and collective freedoms, as well as dialogue between all parties as the only possible tool for resolving political conflicts."
The demonstration ended with the singing of the Catalan national anthem Els Segadors. But the CDRs continued at the Model prison. And president Torra, after leaving the rally, also paid a visit to the disused Barcelona penitentiary.
