'The people who hit us will have to lower their eyes,' says Puigdemont

"One year has passed and we can look to each other in the eye and tell our children what we did; those who struck us won't be able to do that, they’ll have to lower their eyes," said on Monday the top Catalan authority during the referendum one year ago, Carles Puigdemont.

From Brussels, where he had to move after the vote and the subsequent declaration of independence on October 27 to avoid being jailed in Spain, the former Catalan president also claimed that "their children and grandchildren won't understand why they used force and violence to keep people from expressing themselves in a peaceful way".

Puigdemont expressed his desire to live with last year's memories for a lot of years but in "a free, democratic republic, without fear".

He made such comments during a short event in which he and two of his former cabinet members took part in Waterloo, Puigdemont's residence.

The former Catalan president, along with all this former executive, is being prosecuted for misuse of public funds in Spain because of the vote, a crime that might carry up to eight years in jail.