Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, who spearheaded Catalonia’s 2017 bid to break away from Spain, said today he will retire from local politics if he fails to be elected president of the region in May.
“I can’t do active politics if I don’t have the responsibility of the presidency (…) It wouldn’t make sense to dedicate myself to being the head of the opposition” in the local parliament, he said in an interview with Catalan radio station Rac 1.
Puigdemont, an MEP, announced last month that he would run in the May 12 election in Catalonia, the region he was president of when the secession attempt took place in October 2017, sparking one of the worst political crises that modern Spain has experienced.
Polls show Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist party leading in these lopsided local elections. Puigdemont’s party Junts per Catalunya (“Together for Catalonia”) is in third place, behind the other major separatist party, the ERC.
Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium in 2017 to escape Spanish justice, hopes to return to Spain soon after the controversial amnesty law was adopted. This law, which halts prosecutions of separatists involved in the attempted independence of Catalonia, was a demand of Catalan separatists in return for the support they offered in mid-November to the new Sanchez government. It was approved in first reading in March and is expected to be adopted by parliament around the end of May.
“With the amnesty law (…) a chapter will be closed, that of exile,” emphasized Puigdemont, against whom an arrest warrant is still pending in Spain. He said today that he wants to return to Catalonia to participate in the meeting to elect the next president of the region, whether he wins the election or not. This discussion is expected to take place in the second fortnight of June.
In late February, Spain’s Supreme Court announced the opening of a preliminary investigation into the crime of “terrorism” against Puigdemont, over his alleged links to an organization that in 2019 called on its supporters to block Barcelona airport. The court has summoned Puigdemont to testify via video link at the end of June.
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