The episode takes place in the waiting room of the Lledoners prison (Barcelona). Thirty-five people have risen early that morning and wait for them to call them to cross the security arch and visit their relatives or internal friends in the prison. In a moment, whispers are generated: a well-known television presenter and two other people pass by and, skipping the metal detector, enter the meeting area through unusual access. The scene took place last Saturday. The protagonists, as this newspaper has learned, were the presenter Risto Mejide and the inmate Raül Romeva. And the discomfort generated in Lledoners has been such that the chief of communications - the one in charge of regulating the visits - of the penitentiary center has requested the transfer.

According to an official report to which Chronicle has had access, the head of the communications department of Lledoners has requested in writing to his superiors that he be relieved of his duties and transferred to another post as a result of this "inadmissible" visit in prison , which he describes as "obvious favoritism" and that, in his opinion, "sadly discredits the good image" of prison workers.

The official does not cite the name of Mejide in his report, but prison sources explain that the visit in question was carried out by the presenter of Todo es Mentira (Cuatro), who was accompanied by the wife of Romeva - who entered the prison with a mobile, according to the aforementioned sources- and by a third person.

Mejide has announced for this afternoon an interview with former Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is in provisional prison without bail and accused of aggravated rebellion with embezzlement of public funds, awaiting the prosecution's sentence .

According to the report, dated Saturday, at nine in the morning three visitors signed up at the window to make an "ordinary communication" with the inmate Romeva. They were assigned the booth 31 . "None of these people is considered an authority or institutional visit (among other things because they are neither authorities nor come on behalf of any institution), so there is no other way of entry except that established in an ordinary way by any visitor", indicates the head of communications of Lledoners.

At 9.15, he continues, when an official went to where the visitors were to go through the metal detector security arch, "in compliance with the regulations established for this purpose," he found that "Romeva visitors do not appear or they are already in the day room, " where they had to wait.

WITH THE SUB-DIRECTOR OF TREATMENT

Five minutes later, the head of communications was informed that the three people "have entered into the company of Mrs. Deputy Director of Treatment" - a position appointed by the Generalitat de Quim Torra - for a different access to the usual, passing through "in front of the 35 people who were waiting in the room " to see other inmates. "The entrance has been through the [door] M-17 without going through any security measures."

"None of us knows Mrs. Deputy Director, who has not even appeared before entering on her own with these visitors," he emphasizes.

In his report to the head of services of Lledoners, the official transfers his "discomfort" for four reasons:

"1st: Because [the way in which the visit took place] contravenes the most elementary regulations on security and equality to which we are all subjected and whose maximum guarantor of its fulfillment is precisely the director or in his case command of incidents, such as clearly establishes point 1 of article 280 of the Penitentiary Regulations ".

"2º Because it demonstrates the equitable, impartial and professional behavior of the department, unfortunately discrediting the good image that we try to maintain with our daily efforts and which are evidenced in the murmurs that this attitude has generated."

"3º Because it is a free, unnecessary and inadmissible gesture, which does not benefit the inmate or visitors at all, to whom the rest of the people who come to the center look suspiciously, seeing how there is an asymmetric treatment and an obvious favoritism among some and others".

"4º Because doing this without even warning us, without even showing up, shows an obvious contempt for us, for our work and for our dignity as workers and as people."

PRISON TELEVISIVE INTERVIEW

Therefore, the person in charge of communications in Lledoners asks his superior to consider the possibility of relieving him of his duties and transferring him "to any other position he deems appropriate."

This same Saturday, Risto Mejide spread a photograph of him in front of the Lledoners prison with this message: "Today I had the privilege of knowing firsthand a reality that, unfortunately, nobody had told me yet." His program plans to broadcast the interview this afternoon.

It is not the first time that the treatment of nationalist politicians in pretrial detention for 1-O raises criticism in Catalan prisons. In October 2018, this newspaper told how a Lledoners service chief denounced the prison director a privileged treatment of these inmates (Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Josep Rull, Jordi Turull, Joaquim Forn, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart) who had its climax in the celebration of Jordi Sànchez's birthday, with cakes included.

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  • Jordi Sanchez
  • Risto Mejide
  • Raül Romeva
  • Oriol Junqueras
  • Josep Rull
  • Jordi Turull
  • Jordi Cuixart
  • Joaquim Forn
  • Barcelona

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