the Catalan separatist in exile Carles Puigdemont risks big to resume his fight

After almost seven years of exile in Belgium, the Catalan Carles Puigdemont returns to the political scene. From the French Pyrenees, he announced on Thursday that he wanted to “complete” the independence process launched in 2017, calling into question his parliamentary immunity.

For the moment, there is no question for the Catalan Carles Puigdemont of setting foot in Spain again: he is still the subject of an arrest warrant for “sedition”after its failed secession attempt in 2017.

Elected MEP in 2019, he currently benefits from parliamentary immunity which allows him to travel everywhere else. It was therefore in Elne, in France, less than 30 kilometers from the border, that he held a conference with the feel of a meeting, Thursday March 21 in the evening. Wearing a suit and tie, with a Catalan flag in the background, he took care of the staging to the millimeter. Although he changed his glasses and shortened his bangs, his determination remained intact.

He has declared his intention to run in the next elections to the Catalan Parliament on May 12. The current Catalan president Pere Aragonès, his great rival, leader of the independence party Republican Left of Catalonia, announced last week the holding of early elections to the Catalan Parliament on May 12, taking everyone by surprise.

In exile for six years in Belgium, Carles Puigdemont wants to return, ensuring that he has not “gave up nothing”. “I want to become president of the Generalitat again”he said, and “complete the process of independence”.

Parliamentary immunity and amnesty law

As several times since 2017, the campaign will again be carried out remotely. In 2019, he was barely able to sit in the Brussels Parliament after his European election. After a temporary ban dictated by Spain, Brussels finally granted him entry into the hemicycle, in the name of parliamentary immunity.

But Carles Puigdemont now hopes to benefit from the amnesty law passed in Spain last week, which should be definitively adopted before the summer. This law erases the famous offense of “sedition”, of which some 400 Catalan separatists are accused. It must therefore allow him to escape a trial and return – in time he hopes – to take office, if he is elected.

This very controversial amnesty was however rejected by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez until last summer. He didn’t want to hear about it until he needed the political support of the separatists to stay in power. It is he, unwillingly, by an irony of history, who puts the turbulent Puigdemont back in the saddle.

A risky bet

The fact remains that Carles Puidgemont has no certainty about the guarantees he could benefit from in the event of his return. Since February 2024, he has also been prosecuted for “terrorism” by the Supreme Court, the highest Spanish judicial body, which has just opened an investigation.

Seven years later, is Carles Puigdemont really expected? Since 2017, he has lost part of his aura, and the Catalans have lost part of their illusions. In 2021, his Junts party came in third position, behind other separatists, who will once again present themselves in dispersed order this year.

His victory is therefore far from assured. It’s a risky bet, especially since to launch into Catalonia he renounces his mandate as a European deputy, and therefore this legal immunity which protected him in Europe outside of Spain.