Jordi Cuixart i Navarro
Jordi Cuixart i Navarro is a Spanish businessman and cultural activist from Catalonia. He is the president of Òmnium Cultural, a non-profit cultural organisation founded in 1961 with more than 180,000 members and 40 local branches in Catalonia. As part of his role in the pro-independence demonstrations prior to the Catalan independence referendum of 2017, he has been imprisoned since October 2017 under charge of sedition brought by the Spanish prosecutor's office. 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 constitutes a disproportionate restriction on his rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and urges Spain to free him. The NGO Front Line Defenders and the Council of Europe consider Jordi Cuixart a human rights defender. He has 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”.