The exiled former president of Spain’s Catalonia region, Carles Puigdemont, has promised to return to Spain.
The leader of the Junts per Catalunya party is set to come back to debate in the Catalan Parliament in favour of his own candidacy for the region’s top job.
“There will be no more campaigns in exile,” said Puigdemont at a rally of 2,000 people in the French town of Els Banys i Palaldà. He added that “only a coup” could impede his return.
Puigdemont is still wanted by the Spanish law authorities. The country’s Supreme Court did not grant him amnesty for alleged crimes including insubordination and embezzlement. The Supreme Court has sent the Amnesty Law to the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal.
Puigdemont no longer has MEP immunity either.
His lawyer has admitted the former Catalan president expected to be detained when he arrived in Spain.
He added though, that Puigdemont “expects the forces of the State to avoid an illegal and arbitrary detention”.
“In the rule of law, democratic obligation prevails over patriotic devotion,” he added.
Jopep Rull, the President of the Catalan Parliament, has said that, as long as he was in the role, “no policemen will come in to detain anybody”.
“That would be yet another affront to democracy,” Rull added.
How and when Puigdemont may return and who might detain him remain unclear.
The Socialist Party of Catalonia won the Catalan elections last May, beating all the separatist parties but failing to obtain a large enough majority.
Socialist leader, Salvador Illa — Pedro Sánchez’s former health minister — has since been in negotiations with Esquerra Republicana, the separatist leftist party, which governed Catalonia until the May election.
Both parties are set to finalise an agreement in the next few days. Esquerra has called for a meeting on August 1 with party members to ratify the agreement.
The outcome of this process would determine the opening date of the Presidency in the Catalan Parliament and probably of Puigdemont’s return.
Puigdemont has vowed that, if he is not elected president in Catalonia, he will undo the national agreement between Junts and the Socialist Party.
That would likely put Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government in jeopardy. His fragile parliamentary majority depends on the votes of Junts and other pro-independence parties both from Catalonia, and the Basque Country.
Junts has already signalled to Sánchez its discontent by voting against his proposed spending ceiling.
