Spain: Carles Puigdemont abandons Belgium to settle on the Spanish border

The former Catalan leader, Carles Puigdemont, living in Belgium since 2017 to flee Spanish justice, announced on Friday April 5 that he would definitively leave Waterloo in Belgium and move closer to his native land. 

Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont attends an event to announce his candidacy for the May 12 Catalan elections, in Elne, France on March 21, 2024. © Albert Gea / Reuters

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With our correspondent in Barcelona

,

 ​​Élise Gazengel

It's official. After six and a half years in Waterloo in Belgium, the

Spanish

politician

Carles Puigdemont abandoned what he had called “The House of the Republic” to settle in French Catalonia. The former

Catalan

president will now live in the Pyrénées-Orientales, only around thirty kilometers from Spain.

This move meets two objectives. First, he intends to take advantage of this geographical proximity to lead several meetings in the Catalan campaign. At the end of March, he announced his candidacy

for the regional elections

on May 12. The ex-leader will thus prepare as best as possible for his return to the country, once the amnesty law has been approved which is supposed to allow him to return without risk of being arrested.

Carles Puigdemont will therefore lead his campaign in France, but he has promised: he will return to Spain if he obtains the necessary support for his inauguration in June, the date on which, according to his calculations,

the amnesty law

will come into force. force.  

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