Non-meager free sets and independent families

Abstract: Our main result is that, given a collection $\mathcal{R}$ of meager relations on a Polish space $X$ such that $|\mathcal{R}|\leq\omega$, there exists a dense Baire subspace $F$ of $X$ (equivalently, a nowhere meager subset $F$ of $X$) such that $F$ is $R$-free for every $R\in\mathcal{R}$. This generalizes a recent result of Banakh and Zdomskyy. As an application, we show that there exists a non-meager independent family on $\omega$, and define the corresponding cardinal invariant. Furthermore, assuming Martin's Axiom for countable posets, our result can be strengthened by substituting "$|\mathcal{R}|\leq\omega$" with "$|\mathcal{R}|<\mathfrak{c}$" and "Baire" with "completely Baire".