Fèlix Millet arrived at prison by ambulance and everything indicates that he will leave it in the same way, heading to a nursing home in Cardedeu (Barcelona), just 12 kilometers from what was his mansion, in l'Ametlla del Vallès, renovated to big with other people's money.
The nursing home seems the final destination of the confessed looter of the Palau, who in the meantime continues to serve a sentence - he has been in prison for almost two and a half years - for the looting.
The Generalitat has just granted him, for "humanitarian" reasons, the third degree of prison, which in theory allows him to leave jail every day and return alone, from Monday to Thursday, to sleep.
But Millet, who is 86 years old and, according to the Government's resolution, suffers from a "serious and incurable" pathology, is not in a position to take advantage of the fresh air.
Jail came late for Millet, when he was no longer even the shadow of the arrogant and powerful man who for years managed the strings and the box of one of the most emblematic cultural institutions in Catalonia, the Palau de la Música, and who he moved like a fish to water in the political sphere.
On June 25, 2020, once the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of nine years and eight months for the
Palau case
and exhausted all resources (including a failed pardon petition), Millet was admitted to the Brians 2 prison. There, in the nursing module, he has spent two years and four months, neither his age nor his state of health Until now, they would have reported obtaining semi-liberty: he is part of the 0.2% of octogenarian inmates in Catalan prisons, according to data from the Generalitat.
EL PAÍS has reconstructed Millet's time in prison through the accounts of people who have followed his prison career and judicial documents, such as a ruling from last January in which, for the umpteenth time, he was denied third degree because, Despite everything, he continued to feel “unpunished” and without assuming his responsibility.
He followed up on two occasions, without success, a program for the treatment of corruption crimes (
Stop and think
) that did not help him much: he has tried to hide luxury objects that he kept in his mansion in L'Ametlla and the collection of rents to avoid compensating the Palau, facts for which he is being investigated.
"Already in the cell, he kept saying that this was the norm at the time, that this is how things worked," these sources explain.
"He said that it was the fault of Convergència [the case uncovered the payment of illegal million-dollar commissions from a construction company to the nationalist party through the Palau], that it was Montull's fault...".
Jordi Montull was the administrator of the Palau, Millet's right-hand man and partner in the looting of the modernist coliseum, a looting estimated at 23 million euros (only half has been recovered) and which allowed them and their families to enjoy, among other pleasures , of exotic trips around the world.
In the trial, held in 2017, eight years after the prosecutor ordered the historical search of the Palau, both confessed to the illegal financing of Jordi Pujol's party, to achieve a reduction in sentence.
But something broke between them and, when they entered Brians 2 in 2020, they didn't even speak.
The silent confrontation of the two old men has been the talk of prison officials.
“Montull suffered because, if he didn't pay, his daughter was going to go to jail, and he complained that Millet wasn't helping him.
They talked bad to each other behind each other's backs.
And, when they passed each other in the corridors, they didn't even greet each other”, they say.
The relationship deteriorated further when, in September 2021, in a controversial decision, the Justice Department granted Montull the third degree that it then denied to Millet.
The life of an old man in the infirmary module of a prison is fraught with difficulties.
Even more so when you use a wheelchair, like Millet, and need help for everything.
The former president of the Palau had the support of trusted prisoners who, in exchange for remuneration, assisted him (him and other prisoners) in day-to-day tasks, according to prison sources.
“Fèlix is not there to interact with anyone or to have a social life.
He sees very poorly and hardly hears, he is very limited, ”says his environment.
Various workers add that, in addition, the Millet family paid out of pocket for the services of a cellmate who "was at their disposal 24 hours a day": "He got him up and down from the chair, gave him water, brought him toilet paper or accompanied him to the patio to smoke”.
A smoker in the module
Prison hasn't broken Millet's addiction to nicotine either.
"She was trying to secretly smoke in the bathroom," these sources point out.
“What he wanted was to be locked up in the cell.
And if not, he was in the day room or with his tobacco, reading a book or watching TV.
Routines, the fair ones ”, they explain.
Nor did he cultivate a special relationship with officials or other prisoners, who did not leave a good impression during his first and very brief stay in prison (13 days) in 2015, regarding some urban irregularities that were being investigated outside the
Palau case .
: when he left, Millet took home a rudimentary television that he had bought in the prison commissary for 150 euros, instead of leaving it, as the unwritten prison codes dictate, at the disposal of the rest of the prisoners.
In February 2018, after the Barcelona Court handed down a sentence, he had to temporarily leave his mansion in l'Ametlla again to enter (one month) in preventive detention, until he paid a bail of 400,000 euros.
Isolated in his world, at this stage of serving his sentence (from June 2020 to October 2022) he has received few visits from abroad: those of his lawyer and, on a few occasions, those of one of his daughters, who lives in United States and that he last saw him last September, when he already observed a worrying worsening, with symptoms of dementia.
In addition to mobility problems, Millet suffers from diabetes and kidney failure and has had to be transferred "two or three times" to the prison hospital, once due to pneumonia.
The last admission to the Terrassa hospital, more than a month ago, still keeps him there and is what has led to the granting of the third degree for humanitarian reasons, a decision that the Prosecutor's Office is considering appealing.
Officials have also observed this deterioration, which not even the prospect of leaving has reversed.
When they told him that, starting in October, he would be able to obtain prison permits, he asked: “Should I go back?
I want to get out so I never have to come back."
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