Puigdemont avoids arrest in Catalonia

Former Catalan Prime Minister Carles Puigdemont, who has spent the past seven years in exile, returned to Spain last Thursday despite an arrest warrant being issued in his name for the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. arrange.

Puigdemont spoke to supporters outside the Catalan parliament in Barcelona on Thursday, but then managed to fend off local police efforts to arrest him.

Police involvement

Puigdemont spoke to around 3,500 Catalan independence supporters gathered outside parliament. He is said to have returned “to remind you that we are still here”. Puigdemont also said that “it is not a crime and that a referendum will never be held”. After that, many expected that Puigdemont, who is a member of the Catalan parliament, would go to the regional parliament, where there was a vote on the new head of the Catalan government.

Puigdemont, however, ran into the crowd and fled, thwarting the police’s efforts to arrest him.

The group “Associated Press” reports that Puigdemont got into a car that drove away at high speed. Catalan police have started looking for him, including checks on roads and train stations. Later, Puigdemont said that he had returned to Belgium, where he had been living for the past few years. “I never intended to surrender to the authorities,” Puigdemont said in a video posted on the X platform on Saturday, adding that the Spanish authorities had no right to try Catalan leaders and that the the case against them was politically motivated. “Trying to enter parliament would mean a willing surrender,” said the former prime minister of the region.​​​​ Catalan. Law enforcement officials announced after the incident that the police intended to arrest Puigdemont “at an appropriate time, so as not to cause disorder”. However, the former prime minister succeeded escape. Two regional police officers were arrested in connection with Puigdemont’s escape. According to Spanish media, one policeman’s car was used when Puigdemont fled. However, the police deny it that they helped the former prime minister escape. The judge of the Supreme Court of Spain, Pablo Llarena, who issued the arrest warrant for Puigdemont, asked for explanations from the Catalan police about the circumstances in which the former prime minister fled.

However, the help given by the local police to Puigdemont is not expected. A regional police officer also helped Puigdemont escape in 2017,

Politics is reporting. Another policeman of this type was the former prime minister’s bodyguard in exile, and he was later prosecuted in Spain.

Amnesty does not defend

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his government have also received criticism for the incident. Alberto Núñez Feijo, leader of the conservative People’s Party, said the Sánchez government had committed “another intolerable humiliation”. There is also a hint that Sanchez is genuinely satisfied with this turn of events.

“Politico” admits that Sanchez would rather see Puigdemont as an exile in Belgium than as a martyr in prison in Spain. In addition, Sánchez needs the votes of Puigdemont’s “Together for Catalonia” party to pass next year’s budget.

“It is clear that no one here specifically wanted to keep Puigdemont,” said Jose Ignacio Torreblanca, director of the Madrid office of the European Council of Foreign Affairs, in an interview with “Politico”, who recalled that after the parliamentary elections of Spain last year, Catalan separatist votes allowed Sanchez to re-enter the post of prime minister. Puigdemont made Spain prime minister “in exchange for an amnesty that does not belong to him,” the expert said. , which marked a law passed by the Spanish parliament in May that restored the leaders of the Catalan independence movement. However, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled in early July that the amnesty law does not apply to Puigdemont, who led the Catalan government from January 2016 to October 2017. The court recognized that the amnesty law does not apply to several charges brought against Puigdemont, including waste of state funds if they were used for personal purposes or in cases where it was money from European Union funds.

When he arrived in Barcelona, ​​​​​​Puigdemont failed to prevent Sánchez’s party member Salvador Illa from becoming the leader of Catalonia.

Since 2010, Ilya is the first head of the department that does not represent separatist political forces. The changes in Catalonia’s government reflect the results of the region’s parliamentary elections in May. In these elections, the position of separatist parties in the regional parliament weakened, which indicates that the idea of ​​Catalan independence is losing popularity.