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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 any intention of surrendering myself voluntarily or facilitating my arrest, as I find it unacceptable that I am being persecuted for political reasons.”
His separatist party Junts per Catalunya threatened to reconsider its support for Spain’s coalition government after he fled the country.
To secure a second term, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez agreed to a controversial amnesty for separatist leaders, including Puigdemont. In return, they received support in parliament.
However, the Supreme Court upheld the embezzlement charges against the former Catalan president, who led the region’s failed attempt at independence in 2017 and has since lived in Belgium and France.
Since the amnesty agreement, the “situation has changed a lot” and “we have to see if it makes sense,” said Junts Secretary General Jordi Turull in a radio interview on Friday.
Further parliamentary support for Sánchez’s government is “only a very narrow path or no path at all,” Turull said, unless Madrid defends the full application of the amnesty law by the judges.
Parliamentary work has virtually come to a standstill in recent months as the juntas awaited several rulings testing the amnesty law.
On the social media site X, Puigdemont argued that Supreme Court judges decided not to grant him amnesty because they were “obsessed with having me in their hands.”
Puigdemont complained that a “witch hunt” had been unleashed against some of his collaborators “simply because they were seen at my side at certain times”.
“I feel very sorry for the people who are feeling the anger of politicians and police,” said Puigdemont.
The Junts leader also accused the new chairman of the Catalan Interior Council, Joan Ignasi Elena, of having triggered a “wave of repression” against him.
Turull said on Thursday that Puigdemont wanted to “assert his political rights as a member of the Catalan parliament” but could not do so because of the targeted police operation against him.
According to local authorities, two police officers were arrested on suspicion of helping the fugitive.
The Junts general secretary also claimed that Puigdemont “slept in Barcelona on Tuesday night”, meaning that he had been on Spanish soil for two days despite the outstanding arrest warrant against him.
Spanish opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, whose right-wing Popular Party has repeatedly criticized the amnesty agreement, said on Friday that the events were “unspeakable and cannot go unpunished.”
He called on Sánchez to explain himself immediately and to dismiss the Interior and Defense Ministers. “In the face of 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 newly elected Catalan president Illa, who is a member of his own Socialist Party and served as health minister during the Covid-19 pandemic. “You will be a great president. Catalonia wins, Spain advances!” Sanchez wrote on X.
