Carles Puigdemont has returned after seven years in self-imposed exile to crash the vote for the new president of Spain’s Catalonia region, even as police in Barcelona tightened security to find him.
Puigdemont was president of Catalonia in 2017 when he unilaterally declared independence. The Spanish government responded by sacking him and ordering his arrest, so he fled to Belgium.
The Catalan parliament convened on Thursday to approve the election of Socialist Party candidate Salvador Illa, after months of negotiations with the separatist ERC party. The vote was upstaged by Puigdemont, who appeared outside the parliament before the session began and gave a five-minute televised speech.
“I have to be there and I want to be there. That is why I have embarked on the return journey from exile,” Puigdemont said Wednesday on X (formerly Twitter).
His stunt outside the parliament apparently surprised both police and the media, who were under the impression he would try to enter the building. Police had blocked all but one entrance to the Parc de la Ciutadella, where the parliament is located, and checked everyone’s credentials before they could enter.
Puigdemont was not only able to give a speech outside, however, but disappear afterward and evade arrest. According to the local daily La Vanguardia, two members of the Catalan police have been detained on suspicion of helping the separatist leader escape.
Earlier in the day, the autonomous region’s police – known as Mossos d’Esquadra – searched the entire parliament room by room. According to Politico EU, they also checked the basement and searched the sewers, while also sealing the passage that connects the parliament building to the Barcelona Zoo.
Puigdemont declined to run in June’s European Parliament elections in order to make another bid at Catalan presidency, but lost the vote to Illa. The Socialist struck a deal with the separatists to form a minority government last week.
Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez has neutralized the Catalan separatists, at least for now, by passing a sweeping amnesty law last year. The opposition responded by organizing massive protests in Madrid.