The victim who has recovered the ballot box taken from her by the Civil Guard on October 1st.

Barcelona1,776 days. This is the exact time it took former ERC leader Marta Molina to recover the October 1st ballot box that stood in her dining room. She did so three weeks ago, when she went to the National Court to retrieve the belongings the Civil Guard seized during a search of her apartment as part of Operation Volhov, the alleged Russian plot behind the now-closed Trial. After spending two nights in jail and an investigation lasting four years, 10 months, and 11 days of "nightmares and unnecessary suffering," the former secretary of Social Movements for the Republicans posed for a photo op with the ballot box, happy, as she left the court on September 8. It hasn't been an easy road. Recovering it has been quite an odyssey.

It all began on October 28, 2020. Four Civil Guard officers knocked on the door of her home a few minutes after 8:00 a.m., in a coordinated operation that resulted in 21 arrests. She didn't hear the doorbell because she was just getting out of the shower. They called her cell phone and, when they asked if she was home, warned her that if she didn't open it, they would smash the door to the ground. "They showed me the search warrant, and when I saw the list of names, I knew this was serious," she says.

They searched her entire house and took her cell phones and computers, some electronic pens, and the ballot box she'd had at home since October 1. "As soon as they entered, when they saw it, they acted like they had to go to the right place, and when they took it, I told them it was a plastic box and that it wasn't evidence, but they replied, 'We'll take it anyway.'" It was a ballot box that had been used in Baix Llobregat during the referendum, but it wasn't from her town, Sant Joan Despí, where she was a councilor from 2003 to 2007. The Civil Guard would also take it away.

The two days she spent in the Travessera de Gràcia barracks were tough, but the treatment was fair. Locked in a cell measuring one and a half meters by two meters, alone, time passed very slowly, like never before in her entire life, and at times she collapsed. "I knew it was a political arrest, but it's inevitable that the boss will betray you and you think about the worst-case scenario, with the memory of the imprisoned government," she confesses.

After 48 hours, she and the rest of the suspects, such as Xavier Vendrell, David Madí, Oriol Soler, and Josep Lluís Alay, were released on bail. Just a few days after her arrest, she already had another ballot box from the referendum at home. After reporting the theft of the ballot box by the Spanish police in a tweet, some friends brought her another one. "'We have a gift for you,' they told me when they came to see me," she explains excitedly.

The shock would come a few months later. The Barcelona court sent the case to the National Court, where the case against Democratic Tsunami had been open for some time for terrorism and which was headed by the judge from the CDR's Operation Judas, Manuel García Castellón. "They were angry at what this country had done on 1-O, they couldn't open any case and they didn't find any ballot boxes or ballots, only four envelopes. They had it in for us, and their revenge is Operations Volhov and Judas, where they accuse us of the most serious crime: terrorism," she claims.

The former Republican leader is proud that the case was closed due to a procedural defect, thanks to the allegations of her lawyer, Marina Roig, who notified that García Castellón had requested an extension out of time, 24 hours later. "It was not accepted until the third appeal and between the second and third the amnesty law was approved, which makes me suspect that it was validated because they preferred it to fall due to a procedural defect than because of the amnesty law, but it is poetic justice that my appeal brought down the case," says Molina.

Judicial list without the ballot box

When the case was closed, he requested that his belongings be taken to a court in Catalonia, but they refused. The surprise came when they handed him the list of what had been taken from his house and the urn was nowhere to be found. "My lawyer told me they wouldn't give it to me, but I told her it was mine and I wanted it." Roig did his job. "She's very persistent," Molina emphasizes. She found this out when she spoke to the court clerk at the High Court who assisted him. "'You're the one with the urn, how tiresome! I don't know where to look for it anymore,' the clerk told me, not wanting to work because she had just returned from vacation, as she confessed to me." Finally, they found it in a dusty corner: "I was thrilled; I couldn't believe I had it back."

He didn't even open the computers. "The urn was the important thing." Not in vain, he says, seven years ago, Catalans exercised their right to decide in that same ballot box, defying the state in an onslaught that can only be repeated, he emphasizes, if the parties are "aligned" and "the leadership of the two major parties changes." The ballot box he recovered is in good condition, but it's full of archival seal stickers. "I didn't take them out, because it shows it's been in hostile territory," he notes. The one they gave him he'll give to a friend to whom he promised eight years ago. The circle closes.