So far, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has been overturning all resources of the independence movement that has arrived. This Thursday was no exception: Strasbourg concluded that Spain did not violate the political rights of Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Sánchez, and Jordi Turull when it prevented them from exercising their rights as members of parliament during their pretrial detention, when they were elected to the Catalan Parliament in the 2017 elections. The Court found no violation of their right to free elections or their right to liberty and, therefore, upheld the limitation of their rights that resulted from their deprivation of liberty ordered by the Supreme Court. In its opinion, the Spanish high court sufficiently justified the deprivation of liberty to "preserve the constitutional order," and recalled that all of them were able to participate in the Catalan elections and that, despite not being able to exercise their rights in person, they were able to take office and subsequently elected a president, Quim Torra, on the 20th.

Hehomo smartphone, this species that we have become by spending hours glued to the screens of our mobile phones, is so accustomed to rapid inputs that, sometimes, it is difficult to perceive the depth of the landscape that surrounds us.

During the process, the independence movement looked to European justice as the silver lining in the face of constant setbacks from the Spanish courts. However, as the lawsuits have arrived in Strasbourg, the European court has rejected them one by one. So much so that, so far, all those considered by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have been dismissed, and this week it has rejected three related to the independence movement. However, the most significant issue remains to be resolved: the court's ruling on the appeals against the Supreme Court's ruling on October 1st—in which many sources are optimistic about the ECHR's verdict—and also against the veto of Jordi Sánchez and Jordi Turull, while in pretrial detention, from appearing in Parliament over the In2. The issue of former President Quim Torra remains to be resolved.

The ERC leader, Oriol Junqueras, and the former minister Raül Romeva have again set foot on the headquarters of the Strasbourg Parliament on Tuesday, which they have been able to access due to their status as former MEPs, since the coronavirus restrictions prevent entry to visitors. It was for this reason that neither the former President of the Parliament Carme Forcadell nor the former ministers Dolors Bassa and Meritxell Serret have been able to access the building despite having traveled to the French city. But Junqueras does not lose hope of being able to step on this institution again with the status of MEP that he won in 2019 after the European elections: "We do not take anything for lost, we are awaiting a new judicial ruling".

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.