Like the pottery he learned to do in prison, Jordi Cuixart (Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, 1975) has shaped life with his own hands. He discovered culture when he opened the door of his uncle's bookshop; at 16 he picked up a broom in a workshop and earnt his first salary, which he spent becoming a member of Amnesty International. He declared himself a conscientious objector and at the age of 28, already a graduate in industrial design, he opened his own company: Aranow, a packaging company. In the 2000s, his name was often heard in pro-sovereignty circles. It was said that he was a successful businessman who gave money to organisations to help the cause. That's how Oriol Junqueras and Elisenda Paluzie met him in 2007: they were starting the Sobirania i Progrés platform and knocked on his door looking for funding. An example: the cars that transported the international observers in the 2011 Barcelona Decideix consultation were covered by a vinyl that Cuixart's company provided free of charge.

Jordi Cuixart's announcement, with which he ends his presidency at the head of Òmnium is an quite explicit gesture about the need to renew the political leadership of the independence movement. In fact, Cuixart himself had already hinted months ago, in an interview in this newspaper, that it was high time to think seriously about name changes. In the end it has been he who decided to step aside and thus set an example. It is never easy to accept that oneself is not indispensable. And even more so in the case of a president who has made the entity grow spectacularly in number of members (when he took office there were 55,000; now there are 190,000) and who, in the midst of the post-referendum defeat of 2017, has managed to preserve it in a field of constructive neutrality within the serious fracture that weighs down sovereigntism, which is incapable of reformulating a shared strategy for the future.

Shake-up at the head of the independence movement. Jordi Cuixart, president of Òmnium Cultural and one of the great symbols of the movement, announced this Friday that he is leaving the presidency of the organisation and will be relieved by philosopher Xavier Antich, current member of the board. "It is time to stand down no one is indispensable," he said on RAC 1, where he revealed that the vice president of the organisation, Marcel Mauri, will also leave office. Cuixart has been president of Òmnium since December 19, 2015, and has decided not to run for re-election for a third four-year term because he considers that "new leadership is needed" and that "we must leave room for it to emerge." From this Friday, when the general assembly has been convened to choose the new board on February 26, Cuixart will be the acting president after more than six years in office, and having held it while imprisoned over the 2017 referendum. Thus, as he has always defended, it is not the State who decides who leads the organisation.

As it celebrates its 60th anniversary, Òmnium is about to reach 200,000 members, has a budget of €10m, 70% of which it allocates to Catalan language projects and its president, Jordi Cuixart, is a political rock star. What can go wrong? Much of the rest. That's why Cuixart has gone from serious to tender in his book Aprenentatges i una proposta [Lessons learned and a proposal] (Ara Llibres) and warns that without a street mobilisation that puts pressure on Catalan and Spanish politicians there will be no independence.

After the cold reunion between Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras on July 7 in the House of the Republic almost four years after the 2017 Referendum, this Friday the president and the vice president of the Government that led the 2017 Referendum have met again in the celebration of 60 years of Òmnium in Elna, in North Catalonia. The organisation wanted to symbolise the reunion of freed prisoners and exiles with the will to turn the page on the discrepancies in the bosom of the pro-independence movement and work out a joint strategy to prepare for the new onslaught with the State. The estrangement between Puigdemont and Junqueras, however, has become evident again with few signs of cordiality between the two.

The road arrives at a small ochre village in the Garrigues between fields and windmills. The president of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart, has chosen a corner in a field in the shade of a magnificent birch tree to talk to the ARA.

The president of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart (Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, 1975), receives ARA in the town of les Garrigues, where he is with his family after regaining his freedom.

"For all these reasons, we will do it again". So ended the speech of the President of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart, at the 47th Human Rights Council of the UN, based in Geneva, but which this year has been held telematically. Cuixart has had a minute before hundreds of listeners around the world, including ministers, ambassadors and senior UN officials, in which he has charged against an "undemocratic" Spanish state. An attitude, according to Cuixart, that the UN has to correct: he has urged the United Nations to "act so that Spain respects international treaties". This is, in fact, the role of the council in which the President of Òmnium has participated in this Thursday, since it meets periodically to protect human rights and address situations in which they are violated. Specifically, Cuixart has had a voice in the eighteenth act that has been made in the framework of the Human Rights Council, where the special rapporteur on the right to peaceful assembly of the UN, Clement Voulé, has presented his annual report: "Access to justice as an integral element of the protection of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association".

The violation of the right to demonstrate, of the right to be heard in court predetermined by law, to a fair trial and to an effective defence, and also of the principle of legality and the prohibition of arbitrary detention. These are some of the arguments that form the appeal that Jordi Cuixart presented last week to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against the sentencing of the Catalan independence bid trials. The main objective of the document, however, is to turn his case into a European case against the "abusive limitation" of fundamental rights, as explained at a press conference by Olivier Peter, one of the lawyers of the President of Òmnium. He explained that the main argument to make in Strasbourg is that the sentence of nine years in prison for sedition violates Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights, relating to restrictions on rights and freedoms. "The right to protest cannot be limited by political will", he said, convinced that the aim of the repression in Cuixart was not to "apply the law" but to "take it away from the street" and "weaken" the role of the sovereigntist entity in the defence of the right to self-determination.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is, now that the judicial route in the State is running out, the destination of the appeals against the sentence of the Catalan independence bid issued a year and eight months ago, on October 14, 2019. But not only the condemned pro-independence leaders and their legal defenses have their eyes set on Strasbourg. Also the magistrates of the Constitutional Court.

The defense of Jordi Cuixart, president of Òmnium Cultural, has handed over this Wednesday the appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg against the sentence of the Catalan independence bid, which has him now in prison. The legal team of the maximum leader of the entity has entered it to register personally in Strasbourg a day after knowing the full sentence and the dissenting opinions of the Constitutional Court. In fact, Cuixart himself assured this Tuesday on Twitter that this would be the next step. "Not a step back and see you in Strasbourg!" he tweeted. This Thursday it is expected that the former MP Jordi Turull also present his appeal to the same European court.

As already happened in the case of Jordi Turull and Josep Rull, the content of the two dissenting votes of the majority of the TC that has endorsed the sentence of the Supreme Court for sedition against Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart becomes the basis on which to build the appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). It is fair to say, moreover, that the appeal of Sànchez and Cuixart is the most likely to succeed, since they were social leaders at the time of the events (and Cuixart still is), without any political responsibility. Juan Antonio Xiol and María Luisa Balaguer go beyond pointing out that the sentences are "disproportionate" and warn: "They threaten to impoverish our democracy, to align us with societies disciplined by the abuse of the penal system in the repression of conduct that takes place in the material sphere of fundamental rights and to distance us from the need for a progressive interpretation and application of the rights that make possible the normal participation of citizens in full democracies." In other words, the sentence aligns Spain with authoritarian regimes (you name the countries, but it could be from Hungary to Russia, passing through Turkey), and distances it from the most advanced democracies within the European Union.

The Constitutional Court has upheld the nine-year prison sentences for sedition against president of Òmnium Cultural Jordi Cuixart and former leader of ANC Jordi Sànchez. The magistrates took the same decision as with appeals by former ministers Meritxell Borràs, Carles Mundó, Jordi Turull and Josep Rull. In the case of the last two, also convicted of sedition, judges Juan Antonio Xiol and Maria Luisa Balaguer wrote a dissenting opinion in which they disagreed with the sentence and argued that the penalty was "disproportionate". They have now expressed a similar opinion in Cuixart and Sànchez's case, representing a fissure for an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

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".

Òmnium Cultural joins the ANC in the pressure of civil society to try to unblock in extremis the formation of a pro-independence government in Catalonia. At an event organised by the organisation at La Farga in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat in the presence of the acting president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and other representatives of ERC, JxCat, the CUP and the Comuns, Jordi Cuixart called for an end to the dynamics of "attrition" and "hyper-tacticism" and for a return to a "sense of state" and "generosity" in favour of a "shared strategy" for all pro-independence movements, which he described as "urgent". "All spaces are essential", he added. Under the watchful eye of personalities such as the President of the Parliament, Laura Borràs, her predecessor in the post, Roger Torrent, and the former President of the Generalitat, Quim Torra, as well as representatives of the ANC and the AMI and the main trade unions, employers and social organisations, Cuixart has riveted the nail on the coffin by warning of the "irreversible" consequences for parties, institutions and citizens in general of a failure of the negotiations that ends with the call for new elections.

On newsstands around the world this Tuesday the following headline could be read: "Separatists a Headache for Spain, Even From Jail". It is the front page of the New York Times, which dedicates one of the six main news items of the day to the president of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart. On the inside pages, the three-paragraph box on the front page becomes an extensive interview with Cuixart in Lledoners prison. The headline asks: "Criminal or martyr? Prisoner Poses a Political Dilemma for Spain". And, in fact, Cuixart does not stop wondering aloud questions that can give an answer to his future: "At some point, Spain will have to ask itself: what do they want to do with me? Eliminate me? They can't," he concludes. Thus ends a report that reviews Cuixart's origins as well as the evolution of the Independence bid.

Amnesty International continues to denounce that the secretary general of Junts and former leader of the Assemblea, Jordi Sànchez, and the president of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart, are deprived of their freedom three years and five months after their imprisonment. This time the organisation has highlighted their situation in the annual report on human rights in the world. In the section on Spain, Amnesty warns that Sànchez and Cuixart "were still in prison" at the end of 2020 after being found guilty "of sedition in connection with the 2017 demonstrations and independence referendum." Without going into assessments, the organisation recalls the situation of the leaders of the sovereignist entities in the section that deals with freedom of expression and assembly in the Spanish state.