The Minister of Justice of the Generalitat, Gemma Ubasart, appeared again this Sunday before the media due to the open conflict with the prison officials who until yesterday maintained the blockade of three Catalan penitentiary centers and who have announced that the blockade will be repeated. next Monday. “It cannot be repeated” warned the head of justice, while she once again proposed an “outstretched hand” to the unions to negotiate a solution to the conflict.
Ubasart has explained that all possible devices have been activated, in coordination with other departments of the Generalitat, such as the Government or the Interior, to avoid the disturbances of recent days and guarantee the rights of the prisoners and their families. An assertion he reiterated on several occasions that suggests the involvement of the Mossos d’Esquadra in the conflict.
However, the councilor did not detail the police action, but she did not rule it out either: “several scenarios are open.” She even left open the possibility that agents could replace officials inside prisons. “The point – she stated – is to guarantee the normality of the centers and security.”
From the department, according to Ubasart, work is being done to implement improvements in the centers, among them the 111 officials displaced in the month of March stood out to reduce the accident rate inside Catalan prisons. He also announced that “the incorporation of 186 new professionals” was planned but he also regretted that now “all this is stopped.”
Regarding the incident at the Mas Enric center that caused the protests, in which an inmate fatally stabbed an official, the head of Justice of the Generalitat, assessed that “it is an extremely serious pattern” that is being investigated and compiled. all the information.
Regarding the possibility raised by some families of denouncing the blockade that prevented visits to prisoners as a violation of human rights, the counselor stated that “all scenarios are evaluated” so that the situation of recent days “does not be repeated” and so that rights and security are guaranteed. In this sense, she recognized that “it is necessary to de-escalate the conflict” with the unions.
In reference to the resignation demand that the unions maintain regarding the secretary of prisons, Armand Calderó, Councilor Ubasar defended that “he is a person who in 1984 was already a prison volunteer” and who has spent a lifetime “building the new penitentiary model “which now, he asserted, “is a European example” as was demonstrated with the management of the Covid pandemic.
