Catalan separatist Carles Puigdemont, the main figure in the 2017 secession attempt, announced on Tuesday that he would leave the presidency of his party, during the congress scheduled for early June in the south of France.
“I will not run for the presidency of the party” Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia), said the 59-year-old MEP in a letter to activists, published on his Twitter account.
“The party needs a more involved president” who “fully participates in the political decisions to be adopted”, explained the former Catalan regional president who fled to Belgium in 2017 to escape prosecution from Spanish justice.
The new leadership of the separatist party will be appointed during the congress organized on June 4 in Argelès-sur-Mer, a coastal town in the south of France located not far from the border with Spain at the level of Catalonia.
Mr. Puigdemont was stripped last year of his MEP immunity by the European Parliament.
The Vice-President of the General Court of the European Union (EU), however, considered that he had no reason to fear an execution of the Spanish arrest warrant in the EU, since the Spanish criminal proceedings are currently suspended, pending a response from the European Court of Justice to a preliminary question from the Spanish Supreme Court.
The party needs a more involved president [qui] participate fully in the political decisions to be adopted
Catalonia was the scene in 2017 of one of the worst crises experienced by Spain since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975. The separatists had organized a self-determination referendum, despite its ban by the courts, and unilaterally declared independence of the region.
Nine pro-independence leaders, including members of Mr Puigdemont’s regional government, were sentenced in 2019 to up to 13 years in prison for their role in the secession attempt before being pardoned last year by the Spanish government in the name of “reconciliation”.
Mr. Puigdemont’s party is still a member of the regional separatist government, now led by the other major pro-independence party, the Republican Left of Catalonia.