Cuixart, on his embrace with Iceta: "I don't want the seed of hatred and resentment to germinate"

The leader of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart, has justified his controversial embrace with Miquel Iceta during the inauguration of Pere Aragonès as president of the Generalitat because he does not want "the seed of hatred and resentment to germinate". "When I see Iceta I embrace him because of the will of the independence movement to build a single people and because I do not want to confront the democrats of Catalonia", said the leader of the entity in an interview with RAC1 from prison to refute the criticism he has received from the independence movement for this gesture. After underlining the broad electoral support that the socialists have, especially in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, Cuixart said that the PSC has a "key role" in the resolution of the political conflict and that it is necessary to deepen the path of "dialogue" and "harmony".

Be that as it may, the president of Òmnium has avoided having words of gratitude towards the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, for his willingness to grant pardons to political prisoners. In this sense, he recalled that he has spent "more time in prison with Sánchez than with Mariano Rajoy" and that his "tone of détente" must be accompanied by a firm commitment to "a full dialogue" that includes the right to self-determination. Likewise, he has denounced the role of the PSOE during October 2017. "He has been irresponsible because on 1-O he called for Rajoy's resignation and on 3-0 he aligned himself with the king", he said, before concluding that "he has followed the right" and that "now he should not be surprised that there is an internal revolt" against the pardons because "he has fed this climate".  

Cuixart, who has again rejected the pardon, has made it clear that he ratifies his statement in the Supreme Court when he said that "I would do it again" and that has served as an argument to the court to position itself against pardons for lack of repentance. "I ratify what I said in the Supreme Court and the resolution of the conflict does not go through a measure of grace as a pardon and we have not asked for it, but what surprises me most is that they accuse me of having an anti-democratic attitude, as is reflected in the report, for exercising fundamental rights", he said.

Despite admitting that the pardons make it possible to "end the pain" of being locked up in prison, Cuixart pointed out that justice could revoke them at the hands of the third chamber of the Supreme Court. "The pardon will be ephemeral as was the third degree, the Supreme is reviewing the sentence upwards", he stressed. He remarked that the president of the Supreme Court and the CGPJ, Carlos Lesmes, has already said that "the pardons had no chance" in a context, he denounced, in which the high court "has set itself up as the guarantor of the unity of Spain". Faced with this scenario, the president of Òmnium called for "creating the conditions to agree on a shared strategy" among all pro-independence actors to confront repression and exercise self-determination.