Carles Puigdemont is no longer in Spain and will never give himself up, his lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, said after the fugitive former Catalan president’s dramatic flying visit to Barcelona on Thursday.
Lluís Llach, a Catalan singer and fervent nationalist, said that Puigdemont was “safe and sound and above all, free” while Jordi Turull, the secretary-general of Puigdemont’s Together for Catalonia party, said he had returned home to Waterloo in Belgium, adding that before his public appearance on Thursday Puigdemont had arrived in Barcelona on Tuesday evening.
Turull claimed Puigdemont had intended to hand himself over to the police once inside the parliament building but was put off by the “increasingly aggressive” police presence. Eventually, according to Turull, he decided not to turn himself in to spare the Catalan police the embarrassment of being photographed arresting him.
However, video evidence suggests that Puigdemont made no effort to reach the parliament and after his brief speech went directly to the waiting car in which he made his escape.
Puigdemont has been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium after fleeing Spain to avoid arrest for masterminding an illegal independence referendum in Catalonia in 2017 when he was president of the semi-autonomous Spanish region.
Nine members of his government received jail sentences of up to 13 years for their part in the independence push. All were pardoned three years later in 2021.
A divisive amnesty law for those involved in the symbolic independence referendum in November 2014 and the illegal unilateral poll that followed three years later was passed by the Spanish parliament in May after Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, struck a deal with Catalan separatist MPs to help him return to power.
However, Spain’s supreme court upheld arrest warrants for Puigdemont and others who were charged with misuse of public funds, ruling that the amnesty law did not apply to them. Puigdemont says the vote was not illegal and that the charges linked to it therefore have no basis.
Pablo Llarena, the supreme court judge who has been attempting to arrest Puigdemont ever 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 managed to evade arrest in the presence of several hundred police officers.
Two Mossos were arrested on Thursday and face charges of aiding the escape of Puigdemont.
Eduard Sallent, the commissioner of the Mossos d’Esquadra, said: “The officers who helped Puigdemont to escape don’t deserve to wear the uniform.”
He denied that there had been any kind of “deal” between the Mossos and Puigdemont, saying: “The plan was to arrest him in Ciutadella park [where the parliament is], which we thought the most suitable location. Agents tried to get to him but he was surrounded by a mass of people. We pursued the car in which he fled.”
Joan Ignasi Elena, the acting Catalan interior minister responsible for the Mossos, gave a press conference on Friday morning in which he called on politicians to exclude the police force from what he described as a political debate.
He criticised Puigdemont for “inappropriate behaviour” in trying to disrupt the investiture of the new Catalan president – the event Puigdemont said he went to Barcelona to mark. Elena said he was launching an internal investigation into the failure to arrest Puigdemont and the existence of possible collaborators.
Puigdemont’s rapid appearance and disappearance succeeded in stealing the limelight from the pro-union, Catalan Socialist party MP Salvador Illa, who was sworn in as president on Thursday.
Although Puigdemont told his supporters the fight for Catalan independence was not over, his return and swift departure is being viewed as something similar to a farewell concert.
Félix Bolaños, the Spanish justice minister, described Puigdemont’s visit as “an incident that offered nothing to Catalan society, designed to make us forget the essential fact that yesterday we put behind us a lost decade in Catalonia, a decade of sterile confrontation, a decade in which no one was the winner, a collective failure”.
In May’s regional election, 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 inside and outside, and deal without prejudice with unresolved political conflicts”.
“Catalonia has to look ahead, there is no time to waste and we have to count on everyone,” he said.
After 12 years of governance that had essentially been a single-issue campaign for independence, the new government is expected to focus on social issues, in particular housing and education.
Despite being one of Spain’s wealthiest regions, Catalonia has some of the worst educational results in the country. Meanwhile, it is estimated that over the past 10 years the cost of housing in Barcelona has risen by 51% while salaries have increased by 3.4%. On average, tenants in the city spend 43% of their salary on rent.
Under a series of separatist governments, these issues have scarcely been addressed, with most political energy being directed at what became known as el procés, the drive for independence.
Laia Estrada, the spokesperson for the leftwing nationalist Popular Unity Candidacy party, said during Thursday’s investiture: “This marks definitively the end of the procés at an institutional level.”
Illa was health minister in Sánchez’s previous government and presided over the Covid pandemic. Sánchez was quick to congratulate him on becoming president. In a message in Catalan posted on X, he said: “We have worked together in the most adverse circumstances. I know how much you love Catalonia. I know how level-headed you are, your common sense and capacity for work. Just what Catalonia needs. You will be a great president. Catalonia wins, Spain advances. Congratulations, Salvador Illa.”
While the national government has declined to comment on Puigdemont’s visit, preferring to focus on Illa’s investiture, the opposition is trying to make political capital out of it.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the opposition People’s party, called on Thursday for the resignation of the interior and defence ministers over the failure to arrest Puigdemont.
“Faced with such a farce, the government can’t go on vacation laughing in the faces of the Spanish people,” he tweeted.
