(Madrid) Catalan independence leader Carles Puigdemont, who set foot in Spain for the first time in seven years during a brief appearance in Barcelona despite an arrest warrant, explained on Saturday that he “never intended” to surrender.
“I never intended to surrender myself to a judicial authority that is not competent to persecute us […] “It is not to deliver justice, but is motivated by political objectives,” Carles Puigdemont explained in a video published on the social network X three days after coming to Barcelona.
From his home in Waterloo, near the Belgian capital, where he claims to be, he claims to have wanted to “enter Parliament to attend the session [d’investiture du chef de l’exécutif catalan] and to be able to exercise my right to speak and my right to vote.”
But the police presence “not to prevent me from entering Parliament, but in the park” located nearby – where he still managed to give a speech on a platform for several hours – dissuaded him, he continues.
“In this context, trying to access Parliament would have meant certain arrest, I would not have had the slightest possibility of addressing the chamber, which was my objective,” he added.
Carles Puigdemont says he then decided to flee “in a context of repression with total encirclement” in order to “reach my Belgian residence here in Waterloo”. The leader of the Junts party explains that he was aware of the “risks” and the “enormous costs in the event of failure”.
PHOTO NACHO DOCE, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Carles Puigdemont, leader of the Catalan separatist party Junts (left)
“It was necessary to denounce at the international level a Spanish state that does not behave democratically when it allows the judges of the Supreme Court to mock the laws approved by its Parliament,” he comments, referring to the amnesty law, fiercely negotiated with the Spanish government in exchange for the support of the independentists in parliament, and which does not apply to him for the moment.
Much criticized, this law is the subject of multiple legal debates and on 1er In July, the Supreme Court ruled that it only applied to some of the crimes charged against the pro-independence leader exiled in Belgium.
A central figure of Catalan independence, Carles Puigdemont reappeared Thursday after a seven-year absence on a platform in the heart of Barcelona, in front of thousands of supporters, before slipping away discreetly, managing to thwart the police operation supposed to allow his arrest.