Catalan separatist leader Jordi Cuixart moves to Switzerland
Madrid sees him as an enemy of the state, a putschist. For the Catalans, however, he is a folk hero: Jordi Cuixart i Navarro (47), Spain’s best-known separatist.
For years he has been fighting relentlessly for «independència», the independence of Catalonia. He was in prison for almost four years. Now he is free and is leaving his homeland. Cuixart emigrated – to Switzerland.
SonntagsBlick reached the Catalan leader on the phone in Barcelona. He confirmed: “Yes, I’m moving to Switzerland with my family.” He will settle near Neuchâtel.
Cuixart’s company has a branch in Neuchâtel
Cuixart emphasizes that the move is not a political flight. The decision to turn his back on Catalonia has private and business reasons. He remains what he always was: an activist. “Only I will take my fight for independence out of Switzerland in the future.”
Cuixart is the founder and president of Aranow Packaging, a company specializing in packaging. In the spring, the company opened a new branch in Neuchâtel in order to implement research and development projects in cooperation with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).
Imprisonment made Cuixart a martyr
However, Cuixart did not become known as an entrepreneur, but as head of the influential cultural association Omnium – and as a political prisoner. A few days after the banned Catalan independence referendum on October 1, 2017, he was arrested and taken to a high-security prison near Madrid. The Spanish state accused him of incitement and rebellion.
The imprisonment made Cuixart a martyr. And triggered a huge wave of protests. Hundreds of thousands of Catalans demand his release and carry his likeness through the streets. In an interview with SonntagsBlick, his wife Txell Bonet said in autumn 2019: “Our son thinks prison is dad’s home.”
At that time, the Spanish judiciary had just sentenced Cuixart to nine years in prison. Other separatist leaders were arrested, and demonstrations in Catalonia turned violent for the first time. There were weeks of riots in Barcelona and other cities.
Probation period and ban from office
Then in June 2021 the surprising turnaround: Cuixart was released. Spanish President Pedro Sánchez pardoned him. Probably also due to pressure from abroad. Cuixart was given a five-year probation period and a ban from office until 2027.
And now the move to Switzerland. This is by no means a withdrawal, says Cuixart. But he announces that he will only fight from the second row from now on: “It’s time for a new generation of activists.” After almost four years in prison, he wants to be with his family more.
Cuixart is not the first Catalan pro-independence activist to settle in Switzerland. In March 2018, Marta Rovira fled to Geneva. The general secretary of the left-wing nationalist ERC party was threatened with a long prison sentence in Spain. The judiciary also accused her of riots and rebellion.
More independence activists in exile in Geneva
In the open letter she wrote at the time: “I cannot express the level of sadness I feel because I have to leave so many people who love me behind.” For weeks, people in Spain were puzzling over where Rovira might have gone. Then she speaks for the first time in the SonntagsBlick, telling about her flight to Geneva and Agnès, her daughter: “I have to give her everything I can. I can’t do that in prison.”
Like Rovira, Anna Gabriel lives in exile in Geneva. Because she did not appear for interrogation in Madrid in 2018, she was put on liability in Spain. Today, the former member of the Left Party CUP presides over the Geneva section of the Unia trade union.
Meanwhile, the Catalonia crisis continues to simmer. The release of Cuixart and his comrades-in-arms has calmed the situation for the time being. But the conflict is not resolved. The trenches could reopen at any time.