Reactions
Exiled Catalan former President Carles Puigdemont and the European Free Alliance referred to Sànchez and Cuixart as "political prisoners". The Spanish Justice Minister Rafael Catalá argued that they were not "political prisoners" but "imprisoned politicians".
Since then, there have been several demonstrations and concentrations asking for their release. On 19 October, 200,000 people with candles gathered in Avinguda Diagonal, Barcelona and on 21 October, 450,000 joined in Passeig de Gràcia to protest against their imprisonment. Another demonstration took place on 11 November, after the imprisonment of some members of the Catalan government, and 750,000 people congregated according to Barcelona city police.
After his detention, activists launched a “yellow-ribbon” campaign in support of Jordi Cuixart and other Catalan activists and leaders who are being prosecuted by Spanish justice.
Amnesty International issued an official statement considering the charge of sedition and the preventive imprisonment "excessive" and called for their immediate release.
Amnesty International calls on Spanish authorities to drop the charges of sedition and to put an immediate end to their pre-trial detention.
On 7 March 2018 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reminded Spanish authorities that "pre-trial detention should be considered a measure of last resort" referring to Catalan politicians and activists arrested after the independence referendum. On 8 August 2018, PEN International made another statement asking Spanish authorities to release Cuixart and Sànchez and considered their detentions to be "an excessive and disproportionate restriction on their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly". Also, public figures such as Jody Williams, Noam Chomsky, Pep Guardiola, Angela Davis and Ben Emmerson demanded his freedom.
The World Organisation Against Torture sent an open letter to the President of the Government of Spain Pedro Sánchez as well as the Spanish Attorney General and Spanish Ombudsman on 22 November 2018 demanding the end of the "arbitrary pre-trial detention and judicial harassment of Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez" and concluded "OMCT considers that the charges against them are unfounded and must therefore be dropped". The day after, the NGO Front Line Defenders also issued a statement calling for the release of Cuixart. In December 2018, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers issued a statement requesting the release of Catalan political prisoners.
The day before the beginning of the trial, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization expressed their support to "those Catalan activists being trialled" and added "perhaps one of the biggest deficit of justice and deliberate confusion between law and justice, is seen in Catalonia". On the same day, the European Democratic Lawyers association requested the immediate release of the Catalan leaders and expressed their concern because of the "lack of procedural guarantees during the trial".
On 29 May 2019, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention urged Spain to release Cuixart, Sànchez and Junqueras and to investigate their "arbitrary" detention and the violation of theirs rights, as well as compensating them for the time spent in jail. The Spanish government criticised the report, arguing that the reasoning for their opinion did not take into account some of the alleged crimes. Spain's government issued a statement that raised doubts about the group's "independence and impartiality" and called on the U.N. to make sure that its semi-independent working groups are not used "for spurious purposes".
After Cuixart was sentenced to a nine-year sentence, Amnesty International reiterated its petition to immediately release Cuixart and Sànchez and denounced that the "vague" and "overly broad" interpretation of sedition done by the Spanish Supreme Court could have negative effects on the freedom of protest in Spain. Amnesty International has since demanded the freedom of Cuixart and Sànchez on two other occasions.
The OMCT also condemned the "disproportionate conviction of Catalan leaders", as did world politicians such as Nicola Sturgeon, Yanis Varoufakis, the EFA and the EELV. Other international organizations also criticized the harsh sentence, such as Front Line Defenders, Liberties, ELDH - European Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights, and AED (Avocats Européens Démocrates).
The UN and the Council of Europe both included him in their 2019 yearly report on the situation of Human Rights Defenders in member states.
In October 2019, thousands of people protested his conviction, and those of eight other Catalan leaders. During the protests, that lasted almost two weeks, 639 people were injured and 214 arrested.
In January 2021, 50 human rights defenders such as Yoko Ono, Irvin Welsh or Dilma Rousseff, and Nobel Prize winners such as Shirin Ebadi, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Jody Williams, Mairead Corrigan or Elfriede Jelinek, joined the Dialogue for Catalonia manifesto, calling for a dialogue between Catalonia and Spain to end the repression and advance towards a political solution.
On 8 June 2021, Spain's Constitutional Court rejected Jordi Cuixart's appeal against his sentence. On 9 June, the day after, Jordi Cuixart's lawyer presented his appeal to the European Courts of Human Rights (ECHR), in Strasbourg, denouncing the "abusive limitation" of fundamental human rights that he suffered. On 20 December 2021, the ECHR informed Cuixart that it had already received the appeal.
In June 2021, Cuixart was freed together with other eight politicians imprisoned in connection with the Catalan independence referendum following a government pardon. Before that, in May 2021, the Supreme Court had asked him for a position on the pardon to prepare the report on the pardons for the Spanish government. He replied that he had not asked for any measure of pardon because everything he had done, he "would do it again", and he demanded an amnesty.
