Gonzalo Boy, the lawyer for fugitive former Catalan president Carlos Puigdemont, said his client is no longer in Spain and will never surrender, after Puigdemont’s dramatic, quick visit to Barcelona on Thursday.
“Puisdemont is safe, sound and above all free,” said Catalan singer and ardent nationalist Luis Yach, while Jordi Turull, secretary general of Puigdemont’s Together for Catalonia party, said he had returned to his home in Waterloo, Belgium, adding that before his public appearance on Thursday, Puigdemont had arrived in Barcelona on Tuesday evening.
Turull claimed that Puigdemont intended to surrender to police as soon as he entered the parliament building, but backed out due to the “increasingly aggressive presence” of police. In the end, according to Turull, he decided not to surrender to spare Catalan police the embarrassment of being filmed arresting him.
However, video evidence suggests that Puigdemont made no effort to reach parliament, and after his short speech went straight to the waiting car in which he fled.
Puigdemont lives in self-imposed exile in Belgium after fleeing Spain to avoid arrest on charges of planning an illegal referendum on independence in Catalonia in 2017 when he was president of the semi-autonomous Spanish region.
Nine members of his government were sentenced to prison terms of up to 13 years for their role in pushing for independence. They were all pardoned three years later in 2021.
Spain’s parliament passed a divisive amnesty law in May for those who took part in the symbolic independence referendum in November 2014 and the illegal one-sided elections that followed three years later, after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez struck a deal with Catalan separatist lawmakers to help him return to power.
But Spain’s Supreme Court upheld arrest warrants for Puigdemont and others accused of misusing public funds, ruling that the amnesty law did not apply to them. Puigdemont says the vote was not illegal and therefore the charges are unfounded.
Pablo Llarena, the Supreme Court judge who has been trying to arrest Puigdemont since he fled the country nearly seven years ago, has demanded an explanation from the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police force, about how Puigdemont was able to evade arrest in the presence of several hundred police officers.
Two of Musso’s men were arrested Thursday and face charges of helping Puigdemont escape.
“The officers who helped Puigdemont escape do not deserve to wear the uniform,” said Police Commissioner Edward Sallent.
He denied that there was any kind of “deal” between El Mossos and Puigdemont, saying: “The plan was to arrest him in Ciutadella Park.” [where the parliament is]“We found the place to be the most suitable, and the security men tried to reach him, but he was surrounded by a crowd of people, so we pursued the car in which he fled.”
Joan Ignasi Elena, the acting Catalan interior minister responsible for the police, held a press conference on Friday morning in which he called on politicians to exclude the police from what he described as political debate.
Elena Puigdemont has criticised his “inappropriate behaviour” in trying to disrupt the inauguration of the new Catalan president – an event Puigdemont said he had gone to Barcelona to celebrate. She said she had launched an internal investigation into the failure to arrest Puigdemont and the presence of possible collaborators.
Puigdemont’s rapid appearance and disappearance has succeeded in stealing the spotlight from Salvador Illa, a member of parliament for the pro-union Catalan Socialist Party, who was sworn in as president on Thursday.
Although Puigdemont has told his supporters that the struggle for Catalan independence is not over, his return and swift departure are being seen as something of a farewell party.
Spanish Justice Minister Felix Bolaños described Puigdemont’s visit as “an incident that offered nothing to Catalan society, designed to make us forget the fundamental fact that yesterday we left behind a lost decade in Catalonia, a decade of sterile confrontation, a decade in which no one was victorious, a collective failure.”
In regional elections last May, Catalans voted overwhelmingly for Illa, a socialist with no nationalist agenda. Yesterday, he referred to Spain as a “plurinational” state, adding that “Catalonia needs to open its doors, both internally and externally, and deal without prejudice with unresolved political conflicts.”
“Catalonia has to look forward, there is no time to waste and we have to count on everyone,” he added.
After 12 years of rule that was essentially a single-issue campaign for independence, the new government is expected to focus on social issues, especially housing and education.
Despite being one of Spain’s wealthiest regions, Catalonia has some of the worst educational outcomes in the country. Meanwhile, it is estimated that the cost of housing in Barcelona has risen by 51% over the past ten years, while salaries have increased by 3.4%. On average, renters in the city spend 43% of their salary on rent.
Under a series of breakaway governments, these issues were rarely addressed, with most political energy directed to what became known as The process, The drive for independence.
“This marks a definitive end to the civil war in Bolivia,” Laia Estrada, spokeswoman for the left-wing nationalist Popular Unity Candidacy party, said during his inauguration ceremony on Thursday. practical “At the institutional level.”
Illa was health minister in Sánchez’s previous government and oversaw the Covid pandemic. Sánchez was quick to congratulate him on becoming president. In a message in Catalan posted on the X website, he said: “We have worked together in the worst of times. I know how much you love Catalonia. I know how calm you are, how well you behave and how capable you are of working. This is exactly what Catalonia needs. You will be a great president. Catalonia wins and Spain advances. Congratulations, Salvador Illa.”
While the national government has refused to comment on Puigdemont’s visit, preferring to focus on Illa’s inauguration, the opposition is trying to make political gains from it.
Alberto Nunez Feijoo, leader of the opposition People’s Party, called on Thursday for the resignation of the interior and defense ministers over the failure to arrest Puigdemont.
“Faced with such a farce, the government cannot go on holiday laughing in the faces of the Spanish people,” he wrote in a tweet.