Jailed former Parliament speaker ‘regrets nothing,’ says her son

As Parliament president, Carme Forcadell was one of the leading figures in the independence push in the past few years. And because of that, she was imprisoned on March 23, 2018 and prosecuted for rebellion. Yet she “regrets nothing” of what she did, which was allowing debates and votes on a referendum and independence in the Catalan Parliament. In an interview with the Catalan News Agency, her son, Ferran Pegueroles, said that she is “convinced” of what she did. According to him, she did nothing “wrong”, but only fulfilling her duty as parliament speaker, that is, allowing debates in the chamber. “Not even if she had wanted, she could have been able to prevent it,” he added.

Still pending trial, Carme Forcadell faces up to 30 years in jail for rebellion, and her son says she and the other jailed leaders “will only end up being released” when their cases are taken to the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg. “Yet we would like them to be released before, because this can stretch on,” he said. Pegueroles gives a gloomy perspective on the Spanish judiciary. “There does not seem to be a justice impartial enough to judge this in a correct way, but I hope to be wrong.”