Judicial timelines dictated that the final session of the trial against the national police officers who blinded the eye of the activist Roger Español would be held on October 1st, seven years after the day of the referendum in which the pro-independence activist was mutilated. The session began with a delay: it was suspended until one in the afternoon because the accused inspector had alleged "a health problem" and resumed when he returned from the hospital. All this has caused the trial to finally end on Friday. Thursday's session included statements from the inspector in charge of the operation, two sub-inspectors, and the officer who fired at Español. However, these statements were overshadowed by the final speech of Español's defense, which even resorted to a sentence by Manuel Marchena and another handed down for the Esther Quintana case, to dismantle the police version of 1-O.

The final stretch of the trial of four police officers for blinding Roger Español in one eye during the 1-O has begun with one goal: to clarify as many details as possible about how the shot was fired by the National Police riot officer who now sits in the dock with three commanders. This Wednesday, specialists from the Photography and Audiovisual Unit of the Mossos d'Esquadra's Scientific Police explained their conclusions to the court after viewing all the footage of the day. The officers explained that a frame from the images shows that the shooter did not aim directly at Español, but rather fired towards the ground. The images also show a "black spot," the bullet, which bounces off the ground before striking Roger Español in the face.

Roger Español (Tarragona, 1974) was one of the thousands of activists who, on October 1, 2017, defended the ballot boxes and polling stations where the independence referendum was being held. He suffered the worst of it when one of the rubber bullets fired by the National Police in Barcelona blinded his right eye. Today, nine years later, he is still seeking justice and has managed to bring four of the police officers who participated in those charges to the defendants' bench, including the riot officer who shot him. They will be the only officers tried for the police violence of October 1st.

The fiasco of the Catalan interpreters at the Roger Español case trial will end in sanctions. As reported by Nació Digital and confirmed to ARA by sources from the Department of Justice, the Generalitat has decided to open a file on the company awarded the translation service, Ofilingua SL, to impose the "economic penalties" provided for in the contract specifications.

The episode of the supposed Catalan-to-Spanish interpreter who was unable to translate even a couple of simple sentences in the trial against the four police officers who put out the eye of activist Roger Español, causing the Catalan lawyers to have to self-translate or switch directly to Spanish, is by no means anecdotal. In the case of a political trial like this one (a trial is political when a victim of police violence for political reasons still has to go through the ordeal of being revictimized to claim the recognition that is owed to them), a fact like this must be understood as an added, or at the very least, subsequent aggression that should have been avoided by all means. Instead of this, the aggression occurred with all the harshness and all the absurdity that characterize the eternal contempt of the Spanish justice system for linguistic diversity, that is, for any language other than Spanish. Because this is the other circumstance that makes the scene at the trial against the police officers who mutilated Español impossible to consider an isolated or anecdotal event: the list not only of slights, but also of judicial actions in the form of resolutions and sentences, by the Spanish justice system against the Catalan language is already endless, uncountable, and unacceptable. And it reaches exactly to this very day.

Of the 10,000 national police officers that the State sent to beat us on October 1st, only four are being tried. The head of this group has declared that, with the number of objects people were throwing at them, it was sufficiently justified to “be able to use anti-riot means,” which “are not harmful, they are deterrent.” And he says this a few meters away from Roger Español, who had an eye emptied by the rubber bullets they fired directly at his body.The accused can lie, of course, especially if they follow the example of their bosses. The Deputy Prime Minister of the Spanish government Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría stated that day: “The object of the actions of the State security forces has never been the people, but the electoral material. They have always sought to protect rights and freedoms.”An interpreter swears before the judge that she will perform the role of interpreter well and faithfully, and then is unable to translate a question from Catalan to Spanish that any of us would have translated without any problem. In the end, the lawyers themselves do the translation until one of them gets tired of it and switches to Spanish. The next day, the press finds out that the interpreter is a graduate in translation and interpreting from UPF, but specialized in Ukrainian and Russian.Memories come of Judge Marchena promising that, if anything, the videos of the police charges would be seen at the end of the trial, "with great pleasure". A veteran lawyer for the political prisoners told them: “You will see that when the trial starts you won't have to go back and forth from prison every day”. The streaming service to follow the trial of the police officers in Barcelona did not work on Thursday afternoon. The question is, therefore, whether the accused will be acquitted or if they will be acquitted and given a medal.

One of the headlines left this Thursday by the Roger Español case trial has to do with the interpreters who were in the courtroom, unable to translate the lawyers' questions from Catalan to Spanish. The lawyers for the private and popular accusations, exercised by Irídia, Òmnium and the ANC, ended up self-translating or questioning the police directly in Spanish after up to two interpreters could not do their job, a fact that the entities have denounced for "violation of linguistic rights". But how could this situation have occurred?

Many things have happened this week, and the most important one (even if it seems so) is not that Florentino Pérez is going to Ceuta today to make a resounding profession of the Spanish identity of Madrid and Ceuta. A kind of “how could I not love you”, if I am Madrid.But today the news in Ceuta is that the thousands of people who were living in poor conditions on the beaches have finally been moved to the city's port, where a decent camp awaits them. It has taken a month and nineteen days for the president of Ceuta, the Spanish government, the judiciary, and the police unions to agree and stop preventing it. A shameful management. By the way, very far but very close to Ceuta, in New York, the governments of Morocco and Israel have signed the agreement by which Rabat and Tel Aviv elevate their diplomatic relations to the embassy level, and they will soon exchange ambassadors. Morocco is not only the neighbor that holds the key to African immigration to the EU, but it also reinforces its long-standing alliance with the United States, now with Trump.But, of course, in a week where the topic of debate has been whether AI could kill us all before 2030, any other news seems small. In reality, everything matters. If we talk about ourselves, it has begun, as you know, the trial of the four national police officers accused of torture and injuries resulting in the loss of an organ, when they fired the rubber bullet that left Roger Español blind in one eye on October 1st. The day before yesterday they said that the operation was “absolutely perfect”, and yesterday the police officers declared, very remorseful, as proof of the aggression with which they were received, that people were shouting “Españolazos” at them, that they were only defending themselves, that they gave warnings and that they were not going to cause harm but to deter. And they said this with Roger Español present there.Police: “The very aggressive manner in which the public gathered there was throwing objects, mm, stones, cobblestones, bottles, from... from the facades they were also throwing them, and their physical integrity was at serious risk. This is more than enough, more than enough, to be able to use the riot control equipment that the intervention units are legally equipped with, which are not harmful, mm, they are not... They are deterrent. They are not harmful, they are deterrent.”But the moment that sums it all up is this one. The judge calls a Catalan interpreter, who gets so nervous that she cannot interpret anything.

The President of the Generalitat traveled to Extremadura yesterday to celebrate the National Day there. He said he was going there to present and share an “open, inclusive, and solidary Catalonia.” I wonder when it stopped being open, inclusive, and solidary. Or does open, inclusive, and solidary mean Spanish? Who is the President saying all this to? To Madrid? To the King? To the Ibex-35? To PSOE voters in Catalonia, so they don’t vote for Abascal? Because Illa will leave, and the Extremaduran government will continue to instill the same old prejudices in Extremadurans. Notice that yesterday, to argue that she is against the new financing system, the Extremaduran President, María Guardiola, said that she wants to prevent a new wave of Extremaduran migration from repeating itself. I wonder what 43 years of autonomy has done for Extremadura if we are still like this.As you know, on these occasions the word that is repeated the most is solidarity. And after decades of seeing the fiscal effort we make in Catalonia, one wonders where the solidarity with the Catalans is, among whom there are thousands and thousands of children and grandchildren of Extremadurans, who have to take Rodalies every day, or the AP-7, or have to queue on healthcare waiting lists. I insist, good neighborliness is always good, but it must be based on respect and truth.And speaking of defending the Catalans for the services they pay the State for but which the State does not provide them, let's talk about Rodalies. The cable theft at the Estació de França, in Barcelona, caused delays on the R2 south line. Man, when they can already steal the cable at the Estació de França itself, it's not that you have your guard down, but rather that you have no guard at all, and that goes for Adif. It is the sixth theft in 10 days. And since a piece of news is better understood alongside another:A young woman creates a system to alert about Renfe and Adif delays. It is a system invented by Marina Castellano, a 24-year-old engineer from Badalona, which warns of Rodalies incidents up to three-quarters of an hour before the official channels. Nothing more needs to be said, right? It is a system that detects, verifies, and processes thousands of messages on social networks about breakdowns. Castellano is a student of mathematical engineering in data science at Pompeu Fabra University, and when she had to approach her final degree project (TFG), the idea of improving Rodalies information immediately came to mind "to make life a little easier for users". If a student can do it, why don't those who are paid to do it do it? Because they don't think about the people, that is, about the service they provide.

The first words today must be to congratulate Sebastià Alzamora.Yesterday, the Spanish Ministry of Culture announced that it was awarding him the 2026 National Poetry Prize for the book “Sala Augusta seguit de Llengua materna”, published by Proa. In a Hispanic culture where only that which is Castilian is authentically Spanish, the fact that the ministry has distinguished an author in Catalan is an oasis of recognition and coexistence that we celebrate. This, plus what Alzamora said, that “the prize was received by a book written in Catalan in Mallorca, where the Spanish right and far-right are working to destroy the Catalan language in all spheres”. Be that as it may, many congratulations, Sebastià.For the rest, we are in the same place. With a change that seems minor, but might not be. Judge Llarena blew hot and cold yesterday regarding the application of the amnesty.

Nine years after the police charges of October 1st, Roger Español explained before a court how and when a rubber bullet emptied his eye. His testimony opened the trial of the only four police officers who will be judged for the October 1st charges. A shotgunner and three commanders face 13 years in prison for an operation that the head of the riot police described as "absolutely perfect," while several witnesses have explained that the agents were shooting directly at people's bodies, not at the ground for the rubber balls to bounce. Español believes the shot was "a reprisal" for having thrown a fence when an officer had hit him with a baton.

Nine years after the 1-O, four national police officers sit this Wednesday in the dock for the rubber bullet that blinded Roger Español in one eye. They are the only officers who will be tried for the charges of a day with a thousand injured. The Prosecutor's Office has requested their acquittal because it believes they were doing their job and the State Attorney's Office is defending them. Even so, Español's complaint and the popular accusations of Irídia, the ANC and Òmnium have caused the case to reach the trial that begins this Wednesday, in which the officers face sentences of up to 13 years in prison and disqualification for the crimes of torture and injuries with the loss of an organ.

More than a hundred entities and more than 50 personalities from culture and communication presented this Wednesday a manifesto in support of Roger Español, the activist from whom the National Police took an eye during the referendum of October 1st. The manifesto arrives on the eve of the trial that will seat the four agents involved in the operation in the dock, who are the only ones not amnestied out of the 162 indicted police officers.

The Barcelona Court has sent to trial the four National Police officers prosecuted for a crime of assault in the operation on October 1st in which Roger Español lost an eye due to the impact of a rubber bullet. The court has concluded that the injuries during the charges at the Escola Ramon Llull in Barcelona are not covered by the amnesty law and, instead, it does apply to Español, who was accused of a crime of attacking the officers.