MADRID (Reuters) – Barcelona braced on Thursday for the expected return of former Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont from self-imposed exile, as the controversial politician is likely to be detained over an outstanding arrest warrant for alleged embezzlement.
On Wednesday, Puigdemont announced he had started his “return trip from exile”, saying he remained committed to attending Thursday’s session of the Catalan parliament to swear in the region’s new leader following an election in May, in which Puigdemont’s party finished second.
“That in order to do so I would risk an arbitrary and illegal detention is evidence of the democratic anomaly that we have a duty to denounce and fight against,” he said in a video posted on social media.
The building in central Barcelona housing the regional parliament was fenced off and surrounded by officers of the Catalan police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra.
It remains unclear how, or if, Puigdemont plans to access the parliament before being arrested.
Puigdemont, 61, a former journalist, fled to Belgium seven years ago after a failed secession bid and has been living in exile ever since.
His hardline pro-independence party Junts has called on supporters to give Puigdemont a mass welcome at the nearby Arc de Triomf monument, where a stage with TV screens has been set up. Other Catalan separatist parties and civil society groups said they would also attend.
Far-right Vox was set to hold a counter-protest outside the parliament. Its secretary general, Ignacio Garriga, said on X that “we will not tolerate the humiliation of seeing a criminal and fugitive from justice enter parliament”.
The vote to invest Socialist Salvador Illa, who will be backed by the left-wing separatist ERC party after a bilateral deal last week, is slated to kick off at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT).
The Spanish parliament passed an amnesty law in May pardoning those involved in the failed 2017 secession bid, but the Supreme Court upheld arrest warrants for Puigdemont and two others who were also charged with embezzlement, ruling that the amnesty law does not apply to them.
The court said the three obtained personal gain by charging the expenses of holding the independence referendum deemed illegal by the Spanish judiciary to the regional treasury, a move he described as not being in the public interest.
Puigdemont insists the referendum was not illegal and so the charges linked to it have no basis.
(Reporting by David Latona; Editing by Sandra Maler)
