“We don’t start the house with the roof. First serenity and see what has gone wrong and then, in any case, see what responsibilities must be assumed”. The one who answered Gemma Nierga yesterday on RTVE is the Vice-President of the Government, Laura Vilagrà. For the first time, a member of the Catalan Executive opened the door to resignation at the Department of Justice in the face of the open crisis with prison officials after an inmate killed the head chef of Mas d’Enric last Thursday.
The family of 46-year-old Nuria López López wanted to be present at the rally that hundreds of civil servants and other professionals from Catalan prisons held in Plaça de Sant Jaume in Barcelona. A rally that took place without incident and with a strong police presence of riot police in the vicinity of the Palau de la Generalitat. All the riot police who had not been at the prison gates last week were in the city center yesterday. The aim of the rally was to interview the president Pere Aragonès. Finally, they were received by Vilagrà after the vice-president assured that she would not move from the Palau de la Generalitat, where she was waiting for the union representatives.
In addition to the vice-president, the meeting was attended by two other high-ranking members of the Executive, but no member of the judiciary, which the unions describe as “invalid” interlocutors for dialogue.
After six days of protests, with Tuesday’s truce, the meeting ended without agreement, but it served to begin loosening a rope that officials are not ready to let go.
Vilagrà conveyed to the unions that the Government is ready to assume “the relevant responsibilities”, but that it will not be until the end of the report that must specify what went wrong for the head chef to be killed by an inmate destined for the stove from four years ago
By now, prison officials no longer need an internal investigation to find out what happened that Thursday, around four in the afternoon. The same colleagues of Nuria in the kitchen or the officials of Mas d’Enric insisted yesterday on the irresponsibility of normalizing the presence of certain profiles of inmates in places of responsibility with access to weapons, such as the kitchen.
The group’s indignation grew throughout the morning and turned into anger and pain when the victim’s family passed on details of the crime to one of Nuria’s colleagues. “We want everyone to know that Nuria suffered a lot. He had bruises on his body from the blows he gave him and from which he defended himself as best he could because his nails were chipped from fighting until the end”, his nephew said.
The officials pointed again to the Center for Initiatives for Reintegration (CIRE), the public company of the Generalitat that has not yet faced the crisis and which was the one that had hired both Nuria and Iulian Odriste, 48, sentenced to 11 for murdering another woman also with a kitchen knife.
The workers maintained an emotional five-minute silence in tribute to the victim, a symbol of protests that do not seem to be abating. But with increasingly distant positions within the collective of officials and which were perfectly visible during the rally.
Anger, pain and helplessness unite them, as well as the need to mark with this murder, the first of a prison worker in recent years in Spain, a turning point in security conditions. But there is no consensus on how to sustain the protests without directly harming the inmates.
There is an increasingly large group of officials who understand that collective protests can no longer directly affect prisoners. The first days of lockdowns in most centers meant that thousands of inmates could not leave their cells. A situation of violation of fundamental rights that has provoked harsh criticism from associations, family groups and that a lawyer from Girona filed a complaint in a guard court.
This part of the collective is a supporter of protests like yesterday’s in Plaça de Sant Jaume or the one called today in front of Parliament, where the Minister of Justice, Gemma Ubasart, will appear to explain the crisis.
Another part of the group, however, defends blocking the operation of the centers again, aware of the high impact of the measure. An option, however, very risky because the tension outside moves inside the prisons, and endangers the integrity of workers and inmates.
Where there is an absolute consensus is that no representative of the workers will sit down to negotiate without first having resignations in Justice. Specifically, that of Councilor Ubasart and that of the Secretary of Criminal Measures, Rehabilitation and Victim Care of the Department of Justice, Amand Calderó.
Vilagrà insisted on offering the unions to “sit down to share information and “decisions”, as well as “resuming” ongoing talks to improve safety in the centres.
After the meeting, the Government spokeswoman, Patrícia Plaja, described the meeting as a “first step”, after half a dozen appointments in which the unions had planted the Administration.
Plaja insisted that the Executive keeps its hand outstretched to “listen to them and to change what needs to be changed if that means more security”. But with the same harshness as on Sunday, in which he intervened alongside Councilor Ubasart, he warned officials that their demands for resignations cannot be the “starting point” for negotiations. And he once again praised the figure of Calderó, an “absolute benchmark” of the Catalan prison model, which is committed to rehabilitation and reintegration and which “works”.
Nevertheless, the spokeswoman assured that when the Government has all the information about the murder of the Mas d’Enric worker, “without haste but also without delay, we will assume all the responsibilities and all the necessary decisions to minimize the risks in prisons and so that such serious incidents never happen again”, he pledged.
Some promises that officials say come too late for Nuria, but also for them.
