Spain is now limiting and conditioning the exercise of democracy and civil and political rights of all citizens. The court sentence, handed with a heavy dose of repression, is an affront against the type of political solution to the conflict that the international community is demanding.

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The court wants to punish and intimidate a whole nation by sentencing us — former members of the government of the Generalitat, the speaker of the parliament of Catalonia and two grass-roots leaders — to a combined 100 years in prison. They will not achieve their goal. The verdict laid bare a political trial that did not judge facts but rather ideas, and sought to curtail the right of Catalans to decide on their future.

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Neither the caretaker Spanish prime minister, the Socialist Pedro Sánchez, nor his predecessor, conservative Mariano Rajoy, have ever wanted to be part of the solution. Every time we have reached out to the government, they have turned their backs. Sánchez has chosen to call for new elections to avoid accepting the necessary backing to form a government that we, the pro-independence parties, offered him as a show of goodwill to initiate talks. And now Sánchez is threatening to usurp Catalan institutions every day. The Spanish government is trying to fan the flames of the conflict instead of working to find a political solution through dialogue, a solution that will necessarily involve the ballot box. Everyone knows: The self-determination referendum is inevitable; we only need to discuss when and how it will be held.

We knew prison could be another step in this path toward freedom. When injustice reigns, it is not uncommon for innocent people to spend time in jail. And in our country, and in my family in particular, we have had too many chances to experience it firsthand. Convicting and jailing democrats, something countries such as Turkey are doing, is definitely not the way to resolve a political conflict. We have said many times that a conflict is not resolved with more conflict, but instead by looking for a democratic solution, and the international community has to be aware of this.

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Jail and exile are not symptoms of the failure of the pro-independence movement, but quite the opposite. Indiscriminate repression proves the failure of the so-called rule of law of the immature democracy that Sánchez and his minister of foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, are making an effort to defend in international forums, using arguments that any informed individual would deem increasingly implausible.

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With this verdict, Spain has told the citizens of Catalonia that they do not have a right to decide on their future in a democratic way, thus limiting their civil and political rights. However, a new period has started in which this conflict will have to be dealt with and resolved through international consensus, the European institutions, the United Nations and, if need be, international courts of law.

We, the independence supporters, will not disappear even if we are jailed and repressed. We will continue demanding a negotiation as a means to find a political solution to the conflict. If Spain does not want to sit on the other side of the table, the international community will have to force them to do it or, worst case scenario, take their place. We will never leave the dialogue, but Spain’s chair can’t stay empty forever.