Dissident Spotlight: Jordi Cuixart
Jordi Cuixart led a protest and urged protesters to be peaceful. He was still imprisoned for two years before his nine-year sentence began.

Jordi Cuixart was the president of Òmnium Cultural, an organization that began as a cultural program focused on Catalan culture. Òmnium also promoted self-determination for Catalonia in the mid-2010s.
For centuries, Catalonia has had its own language and customs. The modern independence was represented by its first political party in 1922. Almost 100 years later, that modern independence movement seemed poised to succeed.
In 2013, leaders from Spain and Catalonia signed an agreement acknowledging Catalonia’s right to self-determination. Spain’s surpreme court ruled the agreement unconstitutional, and many regions held symbolic independence referendums throughout 2014.
Then Catalan leaders tried to have a binding vote on independence in 2017.
A Rejected Vote, and a Long Imprisonment
In October 2017, Catalan voters approved a referendum on independence. Catalonia’s president declared indepedence later that month, but suspended it, hoping to instead reach an agreement with Spain’s government. Catalonia is Spain’s most economiclly propserous region and includes Barcelona, so there would be an economic transition for the rest of Spain if Catalonia separated itself from the country.
During government crackdowns against the independence vote, Jordi Cuixart joined a protest at the Catalan Economy Department. Spain’s government accused Cuixart of sedition and inciting a violent protest despite video of Cuixart urging peace among the protestors.
Cuixart was preventatively jailed for two years before a court ruling in October 2019. He was sentenced to nine years on flimsy evidence of trying to overthrow the Spanish government itself, not just support the democratic creation of an independent region with a long history supporting a claim to self-sovereignty.
The issue of Catalan independence is complicated and fraught, but Cuixart’s crimes don’t match his sentence or the year-and-a-half he was held without trial or the nine-year sentence that came from his trial.
In June 2021, Cuixart was released from prison after a government pardon freed him and eight other prisoners who were serving sentences related to Catalonia’s independence referendum. He still seeks amnesty to expunge his prison sentence from his record.