On June 10, Pope Leo XIV will make a brief stop during his two-day visit to Spain at Brians 1 prison, the third most populated prison in Catalonia, with nearly 1,100 inmates including men who are in pre-trial detention awaiting trial and women who have already been convicted. Xarxa Dret i Presó (Network for Rights and Prison, in Catalan), a platform that integrates 10 entities of different orientations and some with a Catholic vocation, has sent Robert Francis Prevost a harsh letter intending to criticize the situation of the penitentiary center (and the rest of those existing in Catalonia) where he will stop before going to Montserrat. It denounces that it is the prison that “has received the most complaints,” the document accessed by EL PAÍS points out, for alleged mistreatment, isolation practices, mechanical restraints, and also suicides, which total five so far this year. Leo XIV plans to have a meeting with female inmates at the center.
The letter denounces that the Catalan penitentiary system, whose competence has belonged to the Generalitat since 1984, is “apparently very advanced and surely is if compared with prisons he has recently visited or throughout his life,” a clear allusion to the recent papal visit to Bata prison in Equatorial Guinea during his Africa tour. However, the text denounces that Catalan prisons are “far” from the objectives set by their regulatory framework and show “clear signs of regression, unworthy of a developed Western society.” “In short, it does not comply with international protocols,” asserts a text that lists different conventions before referring to a report prepared by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture of the Council of Europe, which warned of problems “of mental health deterioration, the application of measures such as isolation regime and also the abusive use of mechanical restraint practices.”
“The penitentiary center you will visit is made up of women and people in preventive custody, awaiting trial,” the complaining platform addresses Leo XIV directly, then emphasizing that this difficult waiting process in which the inmates find themselves is aggravated by “the slowness and lack of resources of the Justice system.” But inside the prison, the letter expresses, these women also have to occupy modules within the male penitentiary facilities, which makes the limitations of the infrastructure and the activities that can be carried out more evident.
The Catalan Parliament is about to set up a working group on the living conditions in Catalan prisons, an initiative promoted by the ERC, Comuns, and CUP groups with the initiative of Xarxa Dret i Presó, which signs the letter, and includes 10 entities.
The signing entities especially highlight the “suffering” endured not only by the prisoners but also by their families, due to the deterioration “of affective and family relationships and of parental and couple bonds.” The organizations criticize that with the current system, the “social recognition” of the families of the prison population is “practically nil” and that, moreover, they suffer the direct effects of their imprisoned relatives’ situation: economic impoverishment and expenses derived from judicial procedures and travel to the prisons to be able to see them.
Xarxa Dret i Presó claims to work for the total abolition of the practice of immobilizing people in beds in closed regime departments, a measure initially intended for “extreme situations” and applied as punishment in Catalonia in a much higher proportion than in the rest of Spanish prisons. Likewise, the letter also criticizes that the monthly cost of maintaining a prisoner in Catalonia, 6,000 euros, does not achieve results in terms of rehabilitation, considering social stigma, personal degradation, mental health problems, and collateral effects for their families, which “are almost always definitive.”
Among the entities signing the open letter to the Pope are Alerta Solidària, Arrels Advocats, Associació de Famílies de Presos a Catalunya, Observa, Associació pel monitoratge del sistema penal, IACTA Cooperativa d’advocades, Institut de Drets Humans de Catalunya, Irídia – Centre per la Defensa dels Drets Humans, Justícia i Pau, Observatori del Sistema penal i els drets humans de la Universitat de Barcelona, and Xarxa Antirepressió de Familiars de Detingudes.