Fugitive Catalan independence leader Carles Puigdemont said he would return to Spain on Thursday, risking arrest, potentially destabilizing the country’s ruling coalition.
Puigdemont, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium for seven years after organising an illegal independence referendum in Catalonia, said he plans to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the region’s new leader at the Catalan parliament in Barcelona on Thursday.
in Video Message In a statement released on Wednesday, he said, “In normal democratic circumstances, it would be unnecessary and irrelevant for an MP such as myself to announce my intention to attend the session. However, our situation is not a normal democratic situation.”
“Both former regional minister Luis Puig and I are not free to be there. We must answer and face this challenge.”
In May, the Spanish parliament approved a controversial amnesty offered to Catalan separatists in return for helping Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez return to power. The law applies to around 400 people involved in the symbolic independence referendum in November 2014 and the illegal one-sided vote that followed three years later.
But in July, Spain’s Supreme Court upheld arrest warrants for Puigdemont and others accused of misappropriating public funds, ruling that the amnesty law did not apply to them.
“What I can do is attend [Catalan] “Parliament should be normal,” Puigdemont said in a video message. “Doing so puts us at risk of arbitrary and unlawful arrest, which is proof of an abnormality in our democracy and which we have a duty to denounce and fight, not because we are pro-independence, but because we are democrats.”
Police have reportedly been tasked with restricting access to the parliament area, conducting room-by-room searches and even searching the sewers to prevent Puigdemont from entering the Catalan Parliament.
“This is a standard security procedure before an investiture ceremony,” a Catalan police spokesman said. Said Politico.
The Socialist Party won the most seats in the recent Catalan regional elections, but failed to win a majority in the general election.
The moderate pro-independence Catalan Republican Left (ERC), a longtime rival of Puigdemont’s Catalan Liberal Party, agreed to have socialist and former health minister Salvador Illa become the region’s premier. Illa would lead the first non-nationalist Catalan government in more than two decades, a sign of the independence movement’s weakening since its heyday in 2017.
Puigdemont said it was his duty as a former president in exile to attend the inauguration and argued in an open letter that the ERC must bear some of the responsibility if he is arrested. The ERC countered that the justice system is to blame for any arrests, not them.
His allies say the visit to Spain is essential.
“After seven years in exile, Puigdemont has returned to Catalonia for the same reason he left: to prove that the rule of law in Spain has failed when it comes to the independence movement and Catalonia,” said Aleix Sarri, Junts’ international affairs secretary and a former adviser to Puigdemont.
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“Imprisoning him despite the amnesty law would mean that the Catalan independence movement would be treated as an internal enemy that must be suppressed by the Spanish judiciary. If we cannot even abide by the terms of the amnesty law, we cannot abide by anything. His detention and imprisonment would make the need for independence more clear than ever.”
However, Puigdemont’s move shows that most of the independence movement believes his policies are El Choque de Tones Or the train collision, or the standoff with the Spanish government that has reached a stalemate.
Catalan interim President Pere Aragonés said the inauguration would go ahead as scheduled, albeit delayed.
Puigdemont’s arrival and possible arrest could pose a headache for the Sanchez administration, whose conservative Popular Party (PP) came in first in last year’s general election but failed to garner enough support to form a new government.
This allowed Sanchez’s Socialists to consolidate votes, but the only concession they could make to Catalan parties was to grant amnesty – a move that was highly controversial and sparked demonstrations across the country.
Lola Garcia, deputy editor-in-chief of Catalan daily La Vanguardia, historically close to Puigdemont’s party, said his arrival could have broader implications for Spanish politics.
“The possibility of Mr Puigdemont being jailed might complicate things for the Spanish government, but a change of government would not be in his interest at this point,” she said, “but it would not revive the unity of the independence movement or the independence process.”
Despite the formal separation of powers, the Spanish justice system is seen by many, not just Catalan separatists, as highly politicized and an unreformed relic of the Franco dictatorship.
