Jordi Cuixart

He was the president of Òmnium Cultural, a non-Profit cultural organisation founded in 1961 with more than 190,000 members and 52 local branches in Catalonia, from December 2015 to February 2022.

Jordi Cuixart i Navarro (born 22 April 1975) is a Spanish businessman and cultural activist from Catalonia.

Cuixart was born in 1975 in Santa Perpètua de Mogoda.

His mother hailed from Murcia and his father from Badalona.

He joined Òmnium Cultural in 1996.

In addition, he is a member of different social organisations, such as Can Capablanca, a pro-Catalan independence social centre in Sabadell, the cooperative financial institution Coop 57, and Amnesty International.

He was an objector to Spanish military service.

As a businessman, Cuixart is the founder and president of Aranow, a company that exports packaging machinery.

He is co-founder and chairman of FemCAT, a private foundation of Catalan businesspeople.

He became the treasurer and later vice-president of Òmnium Cultural as an associate to Muriel Casals, who first became Òmnium's president in 2010 and was re-elected to the post in 2014.

Under Casals' leadership, Òmnium Cultural's original focus in Catalan culture broadened to include the promotion of self-determination and Catalan independence.

Jordi Cuixart succeeded Muriel Casals as president of Òmnium in December 2015, after she stepped down in July of that year to stand in the forthcoming Catalan election (in the meantime, the organisation was headed by Quim Torra as interim president).

As president of Òmnium Cultural, he focused on widening the sovereignist social majority, while maintaining a program where the Catalan language and culture vertebrate social cohesion.

He promoted, among others, the Lluites compartides (Shared fights) campaign, with which he wanted to promote the shared historical memory of social mobilization processes that, in different areas and moments of time, have been decisive in shaping what is today Catalonia.

As part of his role in the pro-independence demonstrations prior to the Catalan independence referendum of 2017, he was imprisoned from October 2017 until June 2021 under charge of sedition brought by the Spanish prosecutor's office.

He lived in Santa Perpètua de Mogoda for 30 years before moving to Sabadell, where he remained until his imprisonment in 2017.

As a teenager, he studied mechanics in the vocational education centre Institut Escola Industrial i d'Arts i Oficis in Sabadell.

Cuixart also continued the organisation's involvement in the political developments leading to the Catalan independence referendum of 2017.

During this period, Spanish police searched Òmnium's main headquarters twice, and shut down websites promoting mobilization.

On 16 October 2017, Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez were preventively jailed after the state attorney's accusation of sedition, a felony regulated by the article 544 and subsequents of the Spanish Criminal Code.

This sedition was allegedly committed when they organized a protest on 20 September 2017 during Operation Anubis police raids to dismantle the framework of the 1 October Catalan independence referendum performed by the Spanish Civil Guard.

They were accused of leading the protest of tens of thousands of people in front of the Catalan economy department heeding a call made by Òmnium Cultural and ANC.

The investigating judge stated that the leaders did not call for "peaceful demonstration but to the protection of Catalan officials through 'massive citizens' mobilisations", which physically blocked the Guardia Civil from leaving the building for the entire day.

The court clerk remained trapped until midnight inside the building and had to flee by the roof terrace, while several agents were trapped throughout the night as demonstrators shouted outside "You won't get out!" and "They shall not pass".

Cuixart and Sànchez argue that they made several public calls asking for "peaceful" and "civic" protests in social networks, in a public statement in front of the media at noon and in a speech in front of the demonstrators in the evening.

According to the judge, Sànchez encouraged the demonstrators with expressions such as "no one goes home, it will be a long and intense night", on top of a vandalized police vehicle.

But footage from that night also show Cuixart and Sànchez calling off the protests on top of the car at 11pm: "We are asking you, to the extent possible and in a peaceful way, to dissolve today's gathering".

After those calls, most demonstrators left the place and only a few hundred remained.

Those were dispersed by crowd-controls units of the autonomous police force of Catalonia, Mossos d'Esquadra.

Mossos recognized that there was a risk situation and denounced Spanish Civil Guard did not notify them in advance of the searches, making it impossible to prepare a police operation to keep demonstrators far from the building.

In July 2018, Cuixart was transferred to a prison in Catalonia.

In October 2019, after two years of pre-trial detention, Cuixart was sentenced to nine years of prison for sedition.

Amnesty International believes his detention and sentence constituted a disproportionate restriction on his rights to free speech and peaceful assembly, and urged Spain to free him.

The NGO Front Line Defenders and the Council of Europe consider Jordi Cuixart a human rights defender.

He repeatedly said that “as a political prisoner my priority is not getting out of prison, but the solution of the political situation and struggle for democracy and human rights ”.

He was freed in June 2021 following a government pardon.

On 1 February 2019 he was transferred back to a prison in Madrid, expecting trial that started on 12 February and was remitted to decision on 12 June 2019.

In February 2019 he published the book Tres dies a la presó: un diàleg sense murs (literally, "Three days at jail: a dialogue without walls"), a talk with the journalist Gemma Nierga.

In July 2019 he published his second book "Ho tornarem a fer" (We'll do it again), a manifesto to defend the struggle for the fundamental rights, and in November 2021 his last book appeared, “Aprenentatges i una proposta” (literally, “Learnings/Lessons and a proposal”).

He has also written two books for children, “Un bosc ple d’amor” and “El polsim màgic”, the latter dedicate to “the children of all political prisoners around the world”.