Apart from one or two old star-spangled flags bleached by the sun and abandoned on balconies, there are hardly any independence symbols left in Sant Joan de Vilatorrada. Since in June 2021, the left-wing Spanish government, chaired by the socialist Pedro Sanchez, pardoned the nine Catalan independence leaders convicted for the secession attempt of October 2017 who were in prison there, this small town of 11 000 inhabitants, located 70 kilometers north of Barcelona, has regained calm.
No more crowds, on weekends, in front of the Lledoners penitentiary center, the Sunday “musicians for freedom” and the “Bona nit!” » (“good night”) launched every evening to the prisoners by a young local resident using a loudspeaker. Also gone are the yellow ribbons, a symbol of support for “political prisoners”, which adorned street furniture and the edges of jackets, and had provoked the beginnings of confrontation within the population. You have to go up to the prison to find vestiges of the tensions. There, faded inscriptions, painted on the road, have stood the test of time – ” Freedom “, “We are a Republic”, ” We will never surrender “ –, but no one pays attention to it anymore.
This “appeasement”, that we perceive throughout Catalonia, the head of the Spanish government puts it down to the policy he has pursued in Madrid for four years. At the head of a left-wing coalition, he relied on the separatists of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), to whom he offered these pardons and the removal of the crime of “sedition”. And it is again in the name of “living together” that the left is now negotiating with the Catalan separatists amnesty for any offense linked to the illegal referendum of 2017, in exchange for their support, essential for the investiture, in Parliament. Hurry up. Pedro Sanchez has only one month left to complete his majority, if he wants to avoid new elections. And for now, negotiations are stalling.
“We feel betrayed”
While the possibility of an amnesty has provoked several massive demonstrations as well as an outcry on the right and in the old guard of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), it seems to arouse a certain indifference in Catalonia.
On September 11, for the Catalan National Day, a single coach left Sant Joan de Vilatorrada for Barcelona. At the height of the independence movement, there were six of them leaving to fuel a show of force, say Jordi Font, 70, and his wife, Magda Catala, 66, members of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), the association separatist at the origin of the large rallies organized from 2012. They went there, but they did not vote in the regional elections of 2021, nor in the municipal elections in May, nor in the legislative elections in July. Their window is one of the few in the city center to display a pro-independence banner. “We feel betrayed by the [responsables] policies, explains Magda. In 2017, we did everything that was asked of us, we organized numerous mobilizations, but they did not keep their promises. Yet we had won…”
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