For wife of jailed Catalan leader, 'it's like he's been kidnapped'

Record ID: 943650

  • Title: For wife of jailed Catalan leader, 'it's like he's been kidnapped'
  • Date: 19th December 2017
  • Summary: BARCELONA, SPAIN (DECEMBER 14, 2017) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) SUSANNA BARREDA, WIFE OF PRO-INDEPENDENCE LEADER JORDI SANCHEZ, SAYING: "I believe in this project and I think the best way to get ahead is to reinstate the president who was sacked in the way they sacked him." BARCELONA, SPAIN (DECEMBER 11, 2017) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF BARREDA SEATED AT CAMPAIGN RALLY OF H
  • Embargoed: 2nd January 2018 15:10
  • Keywords: Susanna Barreda Jordi Sanchez Catalonia independence prison election
  • Location: MADRID AND BARCELONA, SPAIN; LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
  • City: MADRID AND BARCELONA, SPAIN; LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: Spain
  • Topics: Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
  • Reuters ID: LVA00A7CKY3WN
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A weekly trip to a Madrid prison has become a surreal routine in the life of Susanna Barreda since October 16.
    A day before her husband, Jordi Sanchez, the leader of the ANC, Catalonia's most powerful pro-independence movement, had gone to Madrid to testify before a Madrid judge. She and her children were waiting for him in Barcelona but he never returned.
    In the first imprisonment of senior secessionist figures since Catalonia's Oct. 1 independence referendum, the court ordered Sanchez to be held without bail pending an investigation for alleged sedition.
    "You never think that something like this can occur," she told Reuters at her Barcelona home. "The impact is brutal, because you feel as if he had been 'segrestat'" - 'kidnapped', she says, struggling between Catalan and Spanish.
    "They got him, they took him into a jail and there he is."
    Prosecutors say Sanchez and the leader of Omnium Cultural Jordi Cuixart played central roles in orchestrating pro-independence protests that in September trapped national police inside a Barcelona building and destroyed their vehicles. The two leaders, now known as 'the Jordis', could face up to 12 years in prison.
    "We don't have the feeling that anything has happened or that he committed a crime for which he has to stay in prison and they have to ask so many years for him," she says.
    A social worker for a children's charity, and mother of two girls and a teenage boy, Barreda has taken on the task of helping in the defense of her husband and most recently helping in the political campaign that could re-elect sacked Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, currently in Brussels.
    "My life is like being on a roller coaster with a constant feeling of going up and down. Both in emotions and work. You don't stop with work, the house, the children and many things that I have to do for Jordi. It doesn't stop, it doesn't stop."
    After a meeting of the entire family during one of their visits to the prison, Barreda's husband accepted to be number two on Puigdemont's 'Junts Per Catalunya' (Together for Catalonia) list in the December 21 election. And Barreda agreed to take part in campaigning events.
    "I had never done this type of thing before. It was always him who played this political role. And I feel very sad because he is inside (that jail), and he's the one who would want to be here but they have prevented them from doing so. I think it is very unfair because they are denying him his rights also as a candidate," Barreda says after taking part in a campaigning event in Barcelona.
    Spain's Supreme Court on December 4 refused a Sanchez request for his release on bail in order to be able to take part in the campaign. On December 15, the judge announced he will only be heard in another session after Christmas and New Year.
    In her weekly visit Barreda had to break the news to him.
    "Christmas is coming, and he thought he might be able to leave with the detainees who were released a few days ago, and he thought the judge would rule in the coming days - but instead there won't be a ruling until January 11. So he'll be here, for sure, until January 11. And then we'll see."
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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