Puigdemont returns to Spain as a “free man”, condemning his “repression”
Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont returned to Spain from southern France, and before some 3,500 separatist supporters, who gathered in Barcelona on Thursday (8 Aug), lamented his “repression” of which he had been a victim since 2017, despite being free of the police force set up to capture him.
“Today I have come here to remind you that we are still here because we do not have the right to resign (of his pro-independence ideas),” Puigdemont declared, Euractiv´s partner EFE reported.
“For seven years they have been persecuting us for wanting to listen to the voice of the people of Catalonia. Seven years ago they began a harsh repression that has led us to prison and exile, this has affected the lives of thousands and thousands of people, for the fact of being pro-independence, sometimes just for the fact of speaking Catalan, and they have turned the fact of being Catalan into something suspicious,” Puigdemont denounced.
Much anticipated by the Spanish and international media, Puigdemont, leader of the right-wing separatist party Together for Catalonia (JxCat), announced a few days ago that he intended to enter the Catalan parliament in Barcelona on Thursday.
The reason is the inauguration of Salvador Illa, leader of the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC), as the new president of the regional executive (Generalitat).
“Today, many will celebrate my arrest and think that the scorn will deter us, that it is worth breaking even a law passed by your Parliament to make a mockery of me. But they are wrong. And in their mistake they will once again drag down the credibility of Spanish democracy, although we know that this matters very little to them,” Puigdemont added.
According to the JxCat leader, “it is not, nor was it, nor it will ever be a crime to hold a referendum and obey the mandate of the Parliament of Catalonia,” he stressed referring to the illegal pro-independence referendum of 1 October 2017.
However, according to state broadcaster RTVE, Puigdemont did not enter Catalan Parliament, nor – as of 11.00 am – was there any news that he had been arrested.
Although Illa won the snap regional elections on 12 May, he did not gather a sufficient majority to govern alone. To win key parliamentary support from the left-wing separatist Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) party, he was forced to make concessions, including more self-governing powers for Catalonia.
Despite the amnesty law promoted by Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (PSOE/S&D), which pardons crimes committed by separatist activists between 2011 and 2023, the crime of embezzlement – and personal enrichment in Puigdemont’s case – is not covered by the amensty.
Puigdemont is still under a Spanish national arrest warrant for that crime.
Both JxCat and the ERC each have seven lawmakers in the Spanish national parliament, on whose support the Sánchez coalition government with the left-wing Sumar platform depends.
Puigdemont fled Spain in 2017, going into self-exile initially in Waterloo, near Brussels, until April this year, then he settled in the south of France, from where he crossed the border into Spain.
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