After the pardon of nine political prisoners, there are still dozens of people indicted over the 2017 Independence referendum, among them, the exiles. Right now former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and the former Catalan ministers Toni Comín, Clara Ponsatí and Lluís Puig, as well as former deputies Marta Rovira -also secretary general of Esquerra- and CUP's Anna Gabriel are abroad as a result of charges brought against them.

This Thursday, Junts MEPs Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí have celebrated the General Court of the European Union's (GCEU) decision to restore provisionally their parliamentary immunity while awaiting a ruling on the appeal the three filed against the European Parliament for having agreed to lift their immunity at the Spanish Supreme Court's behest. "We have climbed a step," said the former Catalan president, who explained that it is a "very important" step because it has "no precedent". The three MEPs from Junts consider that defending their rights as MEPs does not go against the European Parliament, but on the contrary, it "strengthens" it, and therefore they hope that it will not oppose the ruling.

More than 250 MEPs and MPs from around the world have signed a letter to the Spanish government demanding "a political solution to the Catalan conflict" and amnesty for prisoners and exiles. The letter was presented this Thursday at the European Parliament by MEP Clare Daly, accompanied by other members of the EU-Catalonia Dialogue platform and with the presence of Carles Puigdemont, Clara Ponsatí, Toni Comín, Diana Riba and Jordi Solé.

More than five and a half million Catalans are called to the polls this Sunday in an exceptional election marked by a global pandemic and economic crisis and by the existence, despite the democratic framework, of political prisoners and exiles. The sum of these two factors makes this 14-F election to decide the Catalan Parliament the strangest in the history of democracy. Moreover, the date has been imposed, against the criteria of the Government and the medical community, by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia, which did not accept the planned postponement. An election called by the judges is therefore another distorting factor. And we can add yet another element of complexity resulting from the convulsive and unstable political panorama of the last decade, with an unstable party system, pending definition: the existence of nine formations with possibilities of obtaining representation in the Parc de la Ciutadella.