He wants to make his return to the head of Catalonia. Independentist Carles Puigdemont, in exile in Belgium for more than six years to flee Spanish justice, announced Thursday March 21 that he would be a candidate again in the regional elections on May 12 in Catalonia.
Carles Puigdemont made the announcement from French territory, during a speech in Catalan to an enthusiastic audience in Elne, a small town in the Pyrénées-Orientales near the Spanish border, a region he described as "the Catalonia of north".
“I have decided to run in the next elections to the Catalan Parliament,” he declared in a platform which bore the words “President Carles Puigdemont”. Behind him were placed a European flag and the Catalan blood and gold flag.
This will be the third time that Carles Puigdemont is running in regional elections in Catalonia since his departure into exile in 2017. He has never been able to occupy his seat due to the arrest warrant hanging over him since the aborted secession attempt. of Catalonia in 2017, which he led as president of the region, and which earned him an arrest warrant from the Spanish justice system, which is still in force.
“I will definitively abandon exile”
The current Catalan president Pere Aragonès, leader of the independence party Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), the great rival of Carles Puigdemont's party Together for Catalonia (JxCat), announced last week the holding of early elections in Catalan Parliament on May 12, taking everyone by surprise.
This announcement came on the eve of the adoption in Madrid by Spanish deputies of an amnesty law for separatists involved in the unilateral declaration of independence of Catalonia in 2017.
This amnesty was the condition set by ERC and especially by JxCat to vote for the reappointment of the socialist Pedro Sanchez as Prime Minister.
Currently being examined in the Senate, the amnesty law should be definitively adopted towards the end of May.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez presented the bill on amnesty for Catalan separatists to the Congress of Deputies in Madrid, Tuesday January 30, 2024. © Javier Soriano, AFP
“This amnesty, which was impossible, is two months away from being approved,” he said, recalling that Pedro Sanchez did not want it less than a year ago.
Carles Puigdemont judged last week "quite reasonable" to think that he could participate in the inauguration debate of the next Catalan president, which should take place in the second half of June, therefore after the promulgation of the amnesty law, and had not hidden that he ardently wanted it.
If he has a majority in the next assembly ready to support his candidacy for the post of president of the "Generalitat" (the Catalan government), then "I will definitively abandon exile to attend the plenary session of Parliament" , he said without giving more information on the date of his return.
He clarified that before the announcement of an early vote in Catalonia, his intention was to run again for a mandate as a deputy in the European Parliament, where he was elected in 2019, but that he was giving it up.
A “possible” self-determination referendum
In statements to the press at the start of the afternoon in Brussels, where he was participating in a European Council, Pedro Sanchez tried to minimize the candidacy of Carles Puigdemont, which he visibly considers a certainty.
"I believe that democracy is about looking ahead, not behind, and at the end of the day, candidate Puigdemont is just a candidate who already ran in 2021, if I remember correctly, and also in 2017 ", did he declare.
"Therefore, I don't think it's something new," he added about the candidacy of Carles Puigdemont, which had not yet been announced. He also launched a call for “the unity of Catalonia”.
On this subject, Carles Puigdemont recalled that his objective had not changed one iota. “We will not give up on obtaining independence if it is the will of the Catalans,” he said to applause from the public.
A self-determination referendum is “possible”, he said. “There is no constitutional obstacle and they know it,” continued Carles Puigdemont.
The elections in Catalonia, a region of nearly eight million inhabitants, promise to be hotly contested. According to a poll published Thursday, the Catalan Socialist Party, regional branch of Pedro Sanchez's Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), would come first, obtaining between 35 and 42 seats, followed by ERC (26 to 32 seats) and JxCat (24 to 29), now sworn enemies.
With AFP
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