As political headquarters go, the monastery of St Benet has got to be among the most beautiful and peaceful anywhere. To get there you must take a breath-taking drive up the sacred mountain of Montserrat.
Sister Teresa Forcades, the unlikely star of local television chat shows, Twitter and Facebook, had been worryingly hard to nail down. So great is the demand for her time and blessing, that her secretary's email here at the monastery, always returns an automatic reply that the inbox is full.
Sister Teresa seems always to be in at least two places at once. She is bright-eyed, confident, almost breezy. Her disarmingly perfect English - mastered during a few years at Harvard University - feels somehow out of place in the humble cloisters of this serene spot.
There's no politician quite like her. She's never without her nun's headdress, and says that everything she does is born of deep Christian faith and devotion. Yet, she has been strongly critical of the church and the men who run it.
Followers of her movement, Proces Constituent, which has signed up around 50,000 Catalans this year, are mainly non-believing leftists. She won't run for office, and says she won't create a political party, but she's undeniably a political figure on a mission - to tear down international capitalism, and change the map of Spain. » | Matt Wells, BBC World Service, Montserrat, Catalonia | Saturday, September 14, 2013
