While the Spanish police have been searching for Puigdemont in vain since Thursday, the Catalan singer-songwriter and head of the separatist civil movement ANC, Lluís Llach, wrote on the platform X that Puigdemont had asked him to say that he was “healthy, safe and, above all, free”. But not a word about where the 61-year-old is and what he is trying to achieve by fleeing again.
Lawyer has his own view on the fighting speech and disappearance
Boye had made a rather terse statement about the commotion the previous evening. He described his client’s return to Barcelona the day before from almost seven years of exile, his short speech in front of thousands of supporters and his subsequent disappearance under the watchful eyes of the press and the police as a normal working day. “He did his political work and went home when he was done, like everyone else does,” he told journalists. Where is this home? It is not his place to say anything about that. In any case, Puigdemont will “never turn himself in.”
In 2017, Puigdemont fled the country hidden in a car after an illegal independence referendum and the subsequent secession of Catalonia from Spain failed.
Although there is now an amnesty for separatists, there is still an arrest warrant against Puigdemont, whom the investigating judge Pablo Llarena accuses of having enriched himself personally in 2017. This crime is exempt from the amnesty. Llarena is now demanding an explanation from the police as to how Puigdemont was able to escape.
