1,776 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.

ANC is warming up for mobilisations to commemorate the Referendum this weekend. Some mobilisations will start this Friday at five in the afternoon with a political event in Illa, in northern Catalonia (currently part of France), to commemorate the important role of this area in the preparation of the referendum. Afterwards there will be a protest drive to Figueres. The president of the organisation, Elisenda Paluzie, has informed that former president Carles Puigdemont will not be able to attend because he has to appear in court on Monday in Sardinia after his arrest on Thursday in Alghero, although he had initially told RAC1 he would go. "He told us yesterday [Monday night] that he would not come because he has to prepare his defence and logistically it is also complicated to get from North Catalonia to Brussels," she explained.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has dismissed the first two appeals over police charges during the Catalan Independence referendum on October 1, 2017. After exhausting Spanish judicial channels, two citizens of Bages denounced Spain to the Strasbourg court in August 2020 for having violated their right to a fair trial due to the lack of a proper investigation of the charges. They also consider that other fundamental rights have been violated such as the right to assembly, free expression and not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.

Josep Borrell already knew he was treading on hostile territory when he decided to go to Moscow on Thursday as the EU's High Representative. The recent imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalni was added to the string of conflicts that mark the relationship between Russia and the EU. But Borrell decided to stick to the journey. And it has not turned out as he had hoped. Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, used the press conference as a trap to score a victory in the geopolitical struggle, and not only in terms of vaccination against the coronavirus. Lavrov not only got Borrell to praise Russia's Sputnik vaccine, but he also stabbed the former Spanish minister in the back when he attacked him on one of his weak points. He reproached him for imprisoning political prisoners in Catalonia to defend himself against accusations of the poisoning and imprisonment of Navalni. And Borrell was undeterred.