The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), based in Strasbourg, has now received appeals from all the political leaders the Spanish Supreme Court imprisoned over the 2017 Independence referendum. This Wednesday the last three were submitted Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) president and former Catalan vice-president Oriol Junqueras and former Catalan ministers Raül Romeva and Dolors Bassa. Now it is time to wait for the verdict. The appellants' legal team explained that all the appeals are expected to be grouped together into a single macro-case, and they reckon it will take "at least" two years to know the final outcome.

Pardons, despite the joy they meant for prisoners and their families, were not an easy dish to digest. The measure of grace allowed them to leave prison, but it did not overrule the Supreme Court sentence, nor their ban from office, nor did it have any impact on the other cases which originated in the Independence bid. The feeling which remained in the pro-independence movement –and among those pardoned– is that the injustice persisted. A year later, Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) has decided to hold an event to commemorate the release from prison of political prisoners and has done so both to vindicate the pardoned and demand amnesty and the dialogue table as ways to resolve the political conflict.

The prosecution has filed an appeal to the Spanish Supreme Court against the precautionary maintenance of an open prison regime for Dolors Bassa and Carme Forcadell. It thus appeals to the court that originally ruled on the matter the decision by the Court of penitentiary surveillance number 1, which rejected the precautionary measures demanded by the Public Prosecutor's Office while it studies the merits of the appeal. The Prosecutor's Office stresses that the organic law of the judiciary establishes the suspensive nature of the appeal in matters of classification when it comes to those convicted of serious crimes who can be subsequently released from prison.

The political prisoners are leaving prison again today, after yesterday they received the open prison regime again. It was granted by the Ministry of Justice of the Generalitat, and it will allow them to go out on the streets during the day but will have to return at night to sleep in prison from Monday to Thursday. The only one who will not leave prison is president Forcadell, because there is an outbreak of coronavirus in the prison of Wad-Ras.