Former Catalan Prime Minister Carles Puigdemont, who made a brief appearance in Barcelona on Thursday after almost seven years in exile, is back in Belgium. According to Spanish media, the general secretary of Puigdemont’s Junts party, Jordi Turull, told Catalan radio RAC1. There is an arrest warrant for Puigdemont in Spain, and although he gave a public speech in Barcelona, the Catalan police did not arrest him.
Barcelona
14:17 August 9, 2024 Share on Facebook
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Puigdemont is back in Belgium | Photo: Lorena Sopen | Source: Reuters
Turull also said that Puigdemont was already in Spain on Tuesday evening. On Thursday morning, the Catalan ex-prime minister appeared at a demonstration of his supporters in front of the regional parliament building. In a short speech, he reiterated that “every nation has the right to self-determination” and took his leave by shouting “Long live free Catalonia!” Then he disappeared into the crowd.
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Before that, he claimed that he was returning to Spain because of the session of the Catalan parliament, where the new prime minister of the region was voted on Thursday. This made him a socialist again after 14 years, and not a representative of the separatists. The separatists lost their majority in the local legislature in the May elections.
Charges of sedition
Puigdemont faces embezzlement charges in Spain over the Catalan independence referendum his government held in October 2017, although the Spanish constitution does not allow such a vote. Until last January, when the change to the criminal law promoted by the Spanish government of socialist Pedro Sánchez came into force, he also faced charges of rebellion.
Sánchez’s government, with the support of separatists in the lower house of parliament, also pushed through an amnesty law for non-violent acts linked to the referendum. Judge Pablo Lllarena, who is in charge of Puidgemont’s case, refused to cancel the arrest warrant, saying that the Catalan ex-prime minister personally enriched himself in the process.
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Llarena called on Catalan police and Spain’s interior ministry to give him an explanation and find those responsible for Puidgemont’s escape on Thursday. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told reporters on his way to Paris that the Catalan police were responsible for the operation to arrest Puigdemont, according to AFP.
In 2019, nine separatist politicians were given prison sentences of between nine and 13 years due to a referendum held in Catalonia under Spain’s previous right-wing populist government, Mariano Rajoy. In 2021, the Sánchez government granted them a pardon.
On Friday, Catalan Prime Minister Salvador Illa, whose Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) won the region’s May elections, took office. Puigdemont’s Junts finished second and another separatist party, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), third, from which Illa negotiated support.
For this, he promised negotiations on changing the funding of the Catalan region. In a speech to the Catalan parliament on Thursday, Illa also said that he and his party were in favor of “applying the amnesty law to everyone”.
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