Simon Hunter
FUGITIVE Catalan politician Carles Puigdemont is ‘already back in Belgium’ after he briefly returned to Spain this week for the first time in seven years.
The Mossos d’Esquadra regional police force are facing serious embarrassment today after the former Catalan premier appeared outside the parliament building in Barcelona on Thursday, where he gave a speech, before vanishing and thus avoiding his arrest to face embezzlement charges.
Despite the police operation to locate him on Thursday, which included a series of roadblocks and a search using a helicopter, he has managed to return to his home in Waterloo, according to Jordi Turull, the secretary general of Puigdemont’s Junts per Catalunya political party.
Speaking to regional TV channel RAC1, Turull explained that Puigdemont had dinner with him in Barcelona on Tuesday evening, having arrived undetected in the city with the apparent intention of taking part in the investiture debate that was held in the parliament on Thursday, and that saw Socialist Salvador Illa voted in as premier.
Puigdemont’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, also confirmed that the politician had already left Spain.
“He didn’t come to hand himself in, he came to fight,” said Boye about his client’s brief appearance on Thursday before he reportedly escaped in a white Honda before he could be detained.
Boye added that Puigdemont would be making a public statement in the coming days.
Two officers from the Mossos d’Esquadra were arrested on Thursday on allegations they assisted Puigdemont with his escape.
But Boye claimed that the arrests were illegal, according to a report in online daily 20minutos, adding that ‘no actions yesterday can be considered a crime’.
Carles Puigdemont fled Spain in 2017 to avoid arrest after he and other pro-independence leaders organised an illegal referendum on secession, which took place on October 1 that year, and a unilateral declaration of independence was subsequently passed in the Catalan parliament.
He has been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium ever since, and has an arrest warrant out against him on allegations of misuse of public funds.
