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Three hundred singers performed the celebrated choral work Carmina Burana as part of an event called 'Song and liberty' held this Sunday today in the parking lot of Catalonia's Mas d'Enric prison, where former Catalan parliamentary speaker Carme Forcadell is an inmate.

Following Saturday's performances by the Orfeó Català and other choirs in the prison carpark near the city of Tarragona, Sunday saw another mass homage to the penitentiary centre where the pro-independence politician and activist Forcadell has been held in preventative custody since July last year. Once again, thousands of people flocked to the event, organized this time by the women's sector of the Catalan National Assembly, to listen, to sing, and to call for the freedom of Carme Forcadell and the other eight members pro-independence leaders, who have been jailed for periods of up to fifteen months prior to trial.

The concert was preceded by a telephone message, played over the PA system, from exiled Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, as well a speech from Geneva by exiled Catalan politician Marta Rovira. "It's not only that women must not be allowed to fall into oblivion, but that we want to be able to exercise our civil and political rights with dignity," said Rovira from Switzerland.

Puigdemont, on the jailed and exiled women: "They are women who are courageous because of their commitment." The president in exile took part, by phone, at an event held at Mas d'Enric. — VellBlues 

"In the upcoming trial for the independence process we will see the harshest side of the repression," said Carles Puigdemont. He asked those present to be ready to carry on working for "the construction of a republic."