Catalan vice president and seven ministers sent to prison without bail

Prison. This is the answer of the Spanish judiciary system to the Catalan government’s roadmap to independence, despite repeated calls for dialogue and mediation in the past few weeks by Puigdemont’s cabinet. Spain’s National Court sent eight Catalan ministers to provisional prison without bail. Led by the vice president, Oriol Junqueras, all the officials who have appeared in court in Madrid will be sleeping in jail tonight.

Yet the former Business minister, Santi Vila, who stepped down in disagreement with the Declaration of Independence, got a different ruling. He has been sent to prison with a €50,000 bail, so he is likely to avoid being held. Apart from Junqueras, the ministers of Home Affairs (Joaquim Forn), Foreign Affairs (Raül Romeva), Governance (Meritxell Borràs), Presidency (Jordi Turull), Social Affairs (Dolors Bassa), Justice (Carles Mundó) and Territory (Josep Rull) have also been sent to jail without bail.

However they are not the only ones who have ended up in prison because of the independence roadmap over the past few weeks. The judge who has sent them to jail on Thursday did the same with the presidents of two civil pro-independence organizations, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart on October 16.