Thread by @lizcastro

“Close your eyes and imagine a space in your house, a space that is 8 meters square. Now imagine a steel bed, a chair, a concrete bench, a toilet without a seat and a shower. Without walls or doors…”—@BassaMontse
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“Choose a colleague from work and imagine that they're shut in there with you for sixteen hours a day. One day after another for almost eighty days.”
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“Are you overwhelmed? Well, now add an iron door that squeaks every time they close you in, old, gray walls, a tiny little window where you can only see a barbed wire covered wall, and you won't be home. You'll be in Alcalà-Meco jail.”
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“Now imagine you want to get a book out of the library, but you can't, today's not the day. You can only go on Thursdays at the assigned time. Now imagine you want to take out three, but you can't, that's against the rules.”

“It's mealtime and you'd like to talk to someone, have breakfast, lunch or dinner talking about life. But you can't, you have to sit in the seat assigned to you when you arrived on the first day, eat hurriedly and then wait in silence.”
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“And you're thirsty and you have to buy water because they don't give you any. And you want fruit and salad or meat or grilled fish, but no, it's not healthy food what you eat every day, one day after another. ”
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“And you have to go the bathroom, but the toilet paper that you're allotted has run out and you have to buy more.”
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“Today it's raining and you can't go out for a walk in the patio. You decide to stretch out on your bunk on your belly as if you were a teenager, and you write your children and you add a drawing on the envelope for your granddaughter.”
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“And you look at the photos you've stuck on the wall with toothpaste, like the other inmates taught you.”
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“And you can't wait for the weekend because you'll see your family, for forty minutes behind a window. And you hope that, when the time comes, that you don't let any tears fall so that don't think that you have a hard life…”
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“You pretend you're fine, strong, determined even though your heart is crying because you can't hold them. And they ask you to speak up and you smile as you get closer to the microphone hidden under those chrome grates. ”
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“And we kiss each other through that dirty window, but it doesn't matter because it's your window, your world, the world that allows you to see your loved ones.”

“And they leave and you go back to the cell and you close your eyees and you imagine you're in your own house and you remember the moments of freedom and you decide to hold on…”
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“… because you know that neither you nor your fellow prisoners should have to live the injustice of your imprisonments and you hope and you wish that this doesn't become normal, and you wait.”
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“You hope there's justice and you know soon it will be EIGHTY days since you've been living there and you can stand it because you're strong and you feel solidarity with your people, the people who have to get you out of this nightmare.”
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“And you fall asleep… You fall asleep seeing the Montgrí.

Montse Bassa i Coll
7-May-2018”

[Montse is the sister of @DolorsBassa, the 58-year-old educator and Minister of Labor, Social Affairs and Families of the Catalan Government…
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…who has been held in Alcalà-Meco jail near Madrid, 700 km from her home, since March 23, 2018 AWAITING TRIAL for charges of REBELLION because the Catalan Government fulfilled its political mandate to HOLD A REFERENDUM on independence on October 1st, 2017…

…She previously spent 33 days in the same jail in late 2017. Bassa is an educator and former city councilor. She has two daughters.]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolors_Ba…
#RogueSpain
Please share.
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Bonus Track: The original letter can be found here, in Catalan: vilaweb.cat/noticies/tanqu…