Imprisoned Catalan pro-independence activist, Jordi Cuixart, says that Spain's recent behaviour might make you think it's a totalitarian state - even though, as he told a Sunday Times interviewer through the glass of a prison visiting booth, "it's a democracy, of course".

Cuixat, convicted by Spain's Supreme Court in October for sedition, then goes on to explain in the interview published this Sunday that he's met "a murderer in prison who is serving a nine year sentence, just like me."

The British newspaper says that for half of the population of Catalonia the pro-independence prisoners are martyrs, while for the government of Madrid they unleashed the worst Spanish crisis for decades. "Their punishment has turned the conflict into the focus of Spain’s fourth general election in four years," writes journalist Matthew Campbell.

Jordi Cuixart explains that he has little hope that the upcoming Spanish general election will bring peace between Barcelona and Madrid. As The Sunday Times says, Cuixart feels that Sunday's date with the polls "is unlikely to end the political limbo in which Spain has languished since the Socialists emerged as the most popular party in the April election - but without enough seats to form a government."

In the interview, Cuixart says he blames "police brutality" for provoking the recent violence on the streets of Barcelona, in which hundreds of people were injured. The president of the Òmnium Cultural civil group makes it clear that the independence movement has "never defended violence."

Cuixart, following last month's verdicts in the so-called "independence process trial", says that he is prepared to spend a decade behind bars: "It’s not just a question of freeing us and saying ‘well that’s all right, everything is settled’. We want a solution. I want my sons one day to live in an independent state," he told The Sunday Times.