Puigdemont sets up political ‘headquarters’ in France

5 months ago 23

Former Catalan president and separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, in self-imposed exile in Belgium for the past six years, has moved to southern France’s Vallespir region to lead his party’s campaign ahead of the regional snap election on 12 May and prepare to return to Spain.

According to sources from his right-wing JxCat party, Puigdemont has already emptied his house in Waterloo, near Brussels, where he settled in 2018, and moved to a new temporary home in Vallespir, less than an hour’s drive from his home in Gerona, Spain.

Puigdemont plans to return to Catalonia for good but needs the Spanish government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (PSOE/S&D) to approve an amnesty law that will pardon several hundred people responsible for unlawful separatist acts in Catalonia between 2011 and 2023.

He will not be able to return for the regional election campaign but will most likely be in Catalonia for the inaugural debate, scheduled for 25 June at the latest, shortly after the European elections.

Puigdemont is confident that the amnesty law, which is still being debated in parliament and has been described as unconstitutional by the Partido Popular (EPP) and the far-right VOX party, will be in place by then.

Last March, he assured that, despite the risk of being arrested, he would return to Catalonia to attend the swearing-in ceremony if the Spanish justice system had not withdrawn a national arrest warrant (for the events of 2017) by June.

As a member of the European Parliament, Puigdemont will have to return to Belgium occasionally, as the European Parliament will be in session in the coming weeks.

From Vallespir, Puigdemont is already preparing his party’s ‘road map’ for the Catalan elections.

The latest polls show Salvador Illa, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) candidate and former health minister, in the lead. JxCat and its left-wing separatist rival, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), in the current regional government, are expected to fight it out for second place.

Main ‘ring’ for the big clash between separatist forces

In front of almost 2,000 supporters, the former Catalan president held the first official presentation of his new electoral platform, Junts+ Puigdemont per Catalunya, in Elna (France) on Saturday.

“The objective of JxCat is not power for power’s sake or office for office’s sake. Power interests us to transform, to take advantage of opportunities, and to promote the country (Catalonia), especially when there are so many things to do,” he said.

During the event, the emblematic songs ‘Waterloo’ (1974) by the Swedish group Abba and ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ (1974) by Lynyrd Skynyrd were played over the loudspeakers, two direct references to the place where Puigdemont has been living for the last six years.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)