Political prisoners currently hold 150 people, some twenty of whom are closely related to Navarra. In view of these figures, we can imagine that the solution to one of the problems that has most hampered coexistence in our country over the last 45 years is not so far away.

If we look at the Navarran prisoners, the data is even more telling. The prisoner who has spent less time in prison has been punished for thirteen years, while the one who has been most in prison for 25 years. On average, Navarran prisoners have been in prison for nineteen years. Except six, all others shall, in the following two years, fulfil the objective conditions for parole under prison law. But so far none of them has been given the opportunity to do so, although they would be entitled to do so. Only three of them have received the third grade (leaving the day to study or work and spending the night in prison).

In the case of three of the six Navarros prisoners who still do not meet the objective requirements for access to parole, their sentences would be considerably reduced if the length of stay in French prisons is taken into account (which, according to European regulations, should be done); the remaining three fall within the scope of Law 7/2003, wrongly referred to as the “law of full compliance with penalties”. The PP completed this law with an absolute majority in June 2003, just two months after the unfortunate photograph of Azores, presided over by Aznar. The context of this law was therefore an authoritarian agenda that extended war and the systematic violation of fundamental rights to the whole world. The content of this law must be adapted as soon as possible to the current situation to become a useful tool for advancing an agenda based on rights and coexistence.

The reality of this data should give us what to think. We have before us two paths: the dissolution of the exceptional penitentiary policy and access to definitive solutions in the short and medium term; or the path that leads us to continue with exceptional measures, with the threat of a scenario of chronification of the problem, leaving the suffering of the last three or four generations of Navarros to the next generation.

And the question is, who is interested in taking one route or another? In our view, the chronification of the problem only interests those sectors that want to impose an authoritarian agenda. These sectors are rooted in various spheres of power and are committed to issues that should be addressed with broad consensus in political confrontation, since there is coexistence and common rights. And most of society, instead, is interested in implementing a solution agenda quickly and correctly. An agenda that respects the rights of all, that recognizes the suffering of all. This social majority also has a rich network of social movements in Navarre that is succeeding in pioneering such important issues as Historical Memory, international solidarity or feminism.

We call on the social majority in Navarre to take the key to solving the issue of prison policy. What would be a real milestone if we were to be able to celebrate it without delay, that is, to remove the prisoners from the equation of Navarre politics. We all have enough strength to achieve this goal. On 13 January we have a date on the streets of Bilbao.

This article is signed by 21 personalities from Navarra:

Irati Jiménez Uriarte (writer), Fernando Rey Staircase (translator), Fernando Armendariz Arbizu (human rights activist), Ainhoa Aznarez Igarza (educator and former president of the Parliament of Navarra), Juanje Soria Gulina (lawyer), Bertsolari Julio Ruiz (film professor)