The Italian police arrested the former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont on his arrival in Sardinia on Thursday evening.
His lawyer Gonzalo Boye confirmed corresponding Spanish press reports.
Puigdemont traveled to Sardines as a MEP, Boye said.
Allegedly he wanted to take part in a festival and meet politicians who are campaigning for greater independence on the island.
Instead, he has to appear before a judge in Sassari on this freedom after spending the night in police custody.
Catalan separatists condemned the arrest, while the conservative Spanish opposition leader Pablo Casado demanded that Puigdemont be brought to justice in Madrid as soon as possible.
Hans-Christian Rößler
Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb, based in Madrid.
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A European arrest warrant has been filed against Puigdemont for his involvement in the illegal independence referendum on October 1, 2017, requested by the Supreme Court in Madrid.
Puigdemont had already been arrested when entering Germany in March 2018 and imprisoned for a short time in Schleswig Holstein.
He was only allowed to leave Germany several months later.
As in the past, the Italian judiciary now has to first examine the extradition of Puigdemont, which was decided against in Germany.
Until March, the separatist leader had protected his immunity as a member of the European Parliament, but this was lifted: According to a majority in the European Parliament, Puigdemont and two other campaigners in Spain are charged, who come from the time before their membership in the Strasbourg house. In July, the European Court of Justice finally rejected the complaint by Puigdemont and his former ministers Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí against the decision; previously the ECJ had temporarily reinstated their immunity. Puigdemont no longer plays an important role in Catalan politics. In February, the rival ERC party won the regional elections in Barcelona.From the "House of the Republic" in the Brussels suburb of Waterloo, he continues to campaign for the independence of Catalonia, but his influence is waning.
Spain has been trying in vain to extradite Puigdemont for almost four years. At the end of October 2017, the then regional president went to Brussels in a night-and-fog operation and surrendered to the judicial authorities there. However, they let him go again. The Spanish government pardoned nine of his fellow campaigners, who had been sentenced to long prison terms in Spain. Puigdemont, on the other hand, was able to move largely freely the whole time. He was allowed to run for the European Parliament and the Catalan regional parliament from abroad. He is only threatened with immediate arrest in Spain. At the same time, several European arrest warrants were issued and revoked.
The current European arrest warrant from the Supreme Court in Madrid was issued in October 2019 in the wake of the pronouncement of the verdict in the trial against leading Catalan separatists. The judges recognized that there was a "riot" in the act of embezzlement of taxpayers' money in the organization of the referendum on the independence of Catalonia in October 2017, which the judiciary and the government had declared illegal. These allegations are also the basis for the European arrest warrant against Puigdemont. There is also a national and an international arrest warrant against him.
After Puigdemont and his former Health Minister Comín took up their mandates in the European Parliament in January 2020, the Supreme Court asked for the Catalans' immunity to be lifted. Earlier Spanish extradition requests for Catalan separatists had not been obeyed by courts in Belgium, Germany and Scotland because they did not recognize the initial charge of "rebellion". In 2019, the Supreme Court also ruled that the "episodes of violence" that occurred before and after the 2017 referendum were not serious enough to be convicted of rebellion. The higher regional court in Schleswig had already ruled in July 2018 that Puigdemont could only be extradited to Spain for embezzlement, but not for rebellion or riot.The level of violence necessary for the comparable German crime of high treason did not exist in Catalonia.
Puigdemont was arrested on the basis of a European arrest warrant in March 2018 while passing through Germany.
In the event of an extradition, the Spanish judiciary would have been bound by the German decision and Puigdemont could then only have been prosecuted for embezzlement in Spain.
The Supreme Court then withdrew the then European arrest warrant against him.
Puigdemont returned to Brussels, where the Belgian judicial authorities had not taken action against him since then.