Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont issued a defiant statement on Friday evening saying he was back in Belgium after evading arrest by Spanish authorities in Barcelona on Thursday.
Puigdemont said he was in Waterloo, south of Brussels, and “never had the intention to surrender myself voluntarily or to facilitate my arrest because I find it unacceptable that I am being persecuted for political reasons”.
His separatist Junts per Catalunya party has threatened to review its support for Spain’s coalition government after he fled the country.
To secure a second term, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had agreed to a controversial amnesty for secessionist leaders including Puigdemont in exchange for their support in parliament.
But the Supreme Court maintained a charge for misuse of funds against the former Catalan president, who led the region’s failed bid for independence in 2017 and has since been living in Belgium and France.
The “situation had changed a lot” since the amnesty deal was struck and “we have to see whether it makes sense”, Junts secretary-general Jordi Turull said in a radio interview on Friday.
Continued parliamentary support for Sánchez’s government had “a very narrow path forward or no path at all”, Turull said, unless Madrid defended the full application of the amnesty law by judges.
Parliamentary work has all but ground to a standstill in recent months as the Junts awaited several judgments that have tested the amnesty law.
On social media site X Puigdemont argued that the Supreme Court judges had decided not to grant him amnesty were “obsessed with having me in their hands”.
Puigdemont lamented what he called a “witch-hunt that has been unleashed” against some of his collaborators, “simply because they have been seen by my side at certain times”.
“I feel very sorry for the people who are on the receiving end of the wrath of politicians and police officers,” Puigdemont said.
The head of Junts also blamed the new head of the Catalan interior council, Joan Ignasi Elena of unleashing a “repressive wave” against him.
Turull said earlier on Thursday that Puigdemont wanted to “claim his political rights” as a member of the Catalan parliament, but he could not because of the police operation targeting him,
Two police officers suspected of aiding the fugitive have been arrested, according to local officials.
The Junts secretary-general also claimed that Puigdemont “slept in Barcelona on Tuesday night”, meaning he had been on Spanish soil for two days, despite the outstanding arrest warrant against him.
Spanish opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, whose rightwing Popular party repeatedly criticised the amnesty deal, said on Friday the events were “unspeakable and cannot go unpunished”.
He called on Sánchez to immediately explain himself and sack the ministers of interior and defence. “Faced with this farce, the government cannot continue to stay on vacation and laugh at the Spanish people.”
The Spanish government did not respond to requests for comment.
Sánchez on Thursday congratulated the newly elected Catalan president Illa, who is a member of his own Socialist party and served as minister of health during the Covid-19 pandemic. “You will be a great president. Catalonia wins, Spain advances!” Sanchez wrote on X.
Read the full article here
