Government by prisoners

The famous Catalan prisoners have returned to Catalonia to a heroes’ welcome from the Catalan government, saluting their fans like rock stars from the prison van in which they were travelling. They were in Catalan prisons to start with and were transferred to Madrid for the trial. Now that it has finished, they will be able to enjoy the privileged life that they missed so much in Madrid (where the prison food was “very windy”). Prisons are a fully devolved power of the Catalan government, which will treat them in the way to which they are accustomed.

Before they were moved Oriol Junqueras, who was the de facto head of the Catalan government with Puigdemont on the run in Brussels and Torra in a distant universe of his own, had a personal office fitted out in the psychiatric wing of Lledoners prison for two reasons: it is the quietest and has individual meeting places where people can expect not to have to mingle with gypsies. Other prisoners were moved around in order to give them the best cells.

Junqueras was running Catalonia from this prison wing with unlimited access to him by any official visitor. Public officials have free access to prisons, but only for their official purposes such as inspections. Free access to inmates is not in the rules but has been granted as an extraordinary privilege. And not only to public officials; a politically important nun and the secessionist Bishop of Solsona were admitted.

Now they are back and it is to be expected that this extraordinary state of affairs will be resumed. We will once again be governed from inside the psychiatric wing of a prison.

There are many kinds of government, democracy, autocracy, meritocracy, kleptocracy, theocracy etc. but I have been unable to find any word for government by prisoners. It’s a Catalan thing.

Source (in Spanish)

El Español

El escándalo del despacho de Junqueras en el ala de Psiquiatría de la cárcel de Lledoners

(The scandal of Junqueras’s office in the psychiatric wing of Lledoners prison)