The 25-year-old is among several thousand ordinary citizens who faced legal trouble for their often tiny part in Catalonia’s illegal secession bid that brought Spain to the brink of rupture six years ago.

Now Calvo hopes his conviction and those of many others will be wiped clean if Spain’s acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, issues a sweeping amnesty for the separatists in exchange for their movement’s political parties helping him form a new government in Madrid.

Those include two pro-secession Catalan parties who led the unsuccessful 2017 breakaway attempt and who now find themselves holding the key votes in Parliament that Sánchez requires.

In a speech before a Senate commission Thursday to discuss the issue, Catalan regional president Pere Aragonès said an amnesty was “essential” for a return to normal political life between Catalonia and Spain.

For Montserrat Nebrera, professor of constitutional law at the International University of Catalonia, the negotiations between Sánchez and the separatist leaders are a “hall of mirrors” in which both sides try to appear that they have the upper hand, when in reality they need one another.

But Omnium and the two Catalan separatist parties say they want much more than just a clean slate for people in trouble with the law: they want the terms of the amnesty to establish a legal pretext for Catalonia eventually holding a binding, authorized referendum on independence.

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