“This is not justice but revenge.” So read the statement by Catalonia’s imprisoned former vice president, Oriol Junqueras, in response to news this Monday that he would face a thirteen-year prison sentence for charges of sedition and misuse of public funds, as a result of his work organizing October 2017’s outlawed independence referendum. Most of the eleven other defendants at the center of the four-month-long trial that began this February received similarly heavy sentences, including civil society leaders Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sánchez, who were each handed nine years of jail time.

Catalans responded angrily, taking to the streets in a wave of mass protests in the hours following the verdict. Thousands of people occupied Barcelona’s El Prat airport, in addition to blockades of train lines and motorways across the region. The protestors’ decision to target the airport on Monday night was inspired by the ongoing anti-government demonstrations in Hong Kong — and they met with a violent response from regional police. Demonstrations continued in Barcelona and other parts of Catalonia for a third consecutive night on Wednesday as the independence movement gears up for a general strike on Friday.

The sentence comes almost two years after the accused were arrested on the orders of the Spanish judiciary, near simultaneous to the application of direct rule by the central government in Madrid. Regional autonomy was restored in June 2018, but arrested leaders have remained in “preventative detention” since that point, while others including former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont have fled the country.