Carles Puigdemont: Catalonia launches search-and-detain operation for former regional leader after return from years on the run

The Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s regional police force, activated a search-and-detain operation shortly before 10 a.m. Thursday to locate a vehicle in which they suspect that former regional leader Carles Puigdemont fled after delivering a short speech in Barcelona. With an arrest warrant in force against Puigdemont for his part in organizing a referendum on independence in the northern Spanish region in 2017, which was declared illegal by the central government and the Constitutional Court, everything points to the fact that the leader of the Together for Catalonia (JuntsxCat) political formation, who has been in exile in Belgium, has reneged on his promise to appear at the investiture debate to install Salvador Illa as the new regional premier after a deal brokered between the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and the left-wing Esquerra Republicana (ERC). The Catalan police had been expected to arrest Puigdemont, who has been on the run for seven years, before the investiture. Puigdemont’s alleged latest escape act, televised in the presence of a police deployment of over 300 agents in Barcelona, has left the Mossos in a state of stupefaction with commanders themselves describing the incident as an “historic ridicule.”

The former Catalan leader — who was at the helm of the Generalitat regional administration from 2016 until he was removed from office by the central government after the October 2017 unilateral declaration of Catalan independence — reappeared at around 9 a.m. in Barcelona before a crowd of around 3,500 people gathered at the gates of the regional parliament building. “For the last seven years we have been persecuted because we wanted to hear the voice of the Catalan people,” Puigdemont said. “They have made being Catalan into something suspicious. All people have the right to self-determination.” Puigdemont also accused the Spanish authorities of launching a “crackdown” on the Catalan separatist movement.

The Socialist-led coalition government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pushed through an amnesty bill earlier this year as a way to move past the 2017 secession attempt and to secure the backing of two Catalan separatist parties to form a government after inconclusive general elections in July 2023 turned them into kingmakers. Sánchez has already pardoned nine jailed Catalan independence leaders but the bill is being challenged in the Supreme Court, which argues the pardon does not apply to the charge of embezzlement, which Puigdemont faces. “We are not interested in being in a country where amnesty laws did not provide amnesty,” Puigdemont said Thursday.

Sources at the Supreme Court explain that the Mossos “knew” they were under the obligation to arrest Puigdemont. These sources stress that the order of the investigating judge Pablo Llarena, who agreed not to apply the amnesty, was “very “clear.”

Everything now points to the fact that Puigdemont has once again managed to give the Mossos d’Esquadra the slip, after he vanished when he was expected to walk to the regional parliament building escorted by the masses of his supporters. The police suspect that Puigdemont is traveling in a white Peugeot, according to sources from the Mossos, who have withheld all official information about their plans to arrest the former Catalan premier.

The operation has led to serious traffic problems in Catalonia while the police carry out controls in the vicinity of Barcelona, as well as on the main highways, the region’s borders, on trains and at the port. A police helicopter has been scrambled as part of the effort to locate Puigdemont. “The force does not deserve this embarrassment. The chief commissioner, Eduard Sallent, the general director, Pere Ferrer, and the councilor himself, Joan Ignasi Elena, must all provide explanations,” one of the main labor unions representing the Mossos, Sap-Fepol, told EL PAÍS through its spokesman, Toni Castejón.

The security services have for weeks been planning Puigdemont’s detention after he announced that he would attend the investiture. An arrest plan was outlined, awaiting confirmation of the manner in which Puigdemont would choose to return. Police sources suspect that the former regional leader has been in Catalonia since Tuesday. Unofficially, police force commanders have insisted that their mission was not to track Puigdemont’s exact whereabouts 24 hours a day, but to arrest him the moment he emerged in public. “There is no active search,” they insisted.

During the negotiations over Puigdemont’s reappearance, officials from the Mossos contacted the former president’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, to discuss the possibility of agreeing on a discreet arrest. Puigdemont rejected the offer. His detention was delegated to a commander of the General Police Station of Information. It would then pass to judicial disposition for Judge Llarena to decide the future of the former regional premier, which could include pre-trial detention or a court appearance and the application of bail conditions. “We are being made to look ridiculous,” said another commander of the Mossos. “This paints us all in a bad light,” added another, while the search for Puigdemont remains active.

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