Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Spanish businessman Jordi Cuixart.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Jordi Cuixart i Navarro is a Spanish businessman and cultural activist from Catalonia. 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. 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. 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.
As a civil society, our task is to pressure governments into democratic changes.
I am not a politician in prison, I am a political prisoner who uses jail to denounce Spain's human rights violations.
Anything against the state's interests, through a non-violent action, is susceptible to be considered sedition.
If you attack our democratically elected representatives, you attack our institutions, all our people and our sovereignty, and we will never allow that.
I don't want to leave prison having been pardoned, but rather with my head held high, with dignity.
Do you really think that the Catalans will end their struggle for their right of self-determination because of a legal decision?
I'm never going to beg for pardon for exercising fundamental rights.
We won't stop protesting. It's the engine that moves society forward.
The pro-independence movement has all different social sensibilities - from left to right, including pro-liberal, socialist and communist.
We are European citizens, as we are European citizens it means what we want to do is exactly like Scotland or Quebec. The difference is that the United Kingdom and Canada they are democratic countries. Spain today is not a democracy and this is the main problem.
The Catalan institutions and political parties have to be consistent, because they have the democratic legitimacy of the ballot box and they can't pass certain responsibilities on to civil society.
For me, prison is a necessary step towards achieving the right to self-determination.
It's the Spanish state which should say sorry for violating the right to protest and freedom of expression.
The cause of self-determination in Catalonia is no different to other citizen causes that fight for a fairer, more democratic future, as we've seen in Chile, Lebanon and Hong Kong.
I am in jail for defending human rights, not independence.