For a man sentenced to nine years in prison for a political crime, Jordi Cuixart, one of the figureheads of Catalonia’s separatist movement, seems in remarkably good spirits.

When I visited him yesterday in the Lledoners penitentiary centre, about 40 miles from Barcelona, he launched into an animated speech about the benefits of yoga, pottery and meditation for maintaining a positive frame of mind.

“If ever I’m feeling a bit down, I remember how many of the world’s political prisoners are forced to endure much worse conditions than us,” he told me through a telephone on the other side of a glass screen.

“We can’t complain, even if we are here despite being innocent of any crime.”

Oriol Junqueras, the former vice- president of Catalonia,