Catalonia’s exiled former separatist leader has pledged to return to the region to claim the presidency if his party wins next month’s elections.
Carles Puigdemont has claimed that his party is “neck and neck” with Spain’s governing Socialists in the race to win power in the region in northeast Spain.
Puigdemont is the lead candidate for his separatist Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) party, basing his campaign just across the border in France.
Recent polls put the Socialists ahead, but Puigdemont claims his party’s internal polling shows the race narrowing. However, both parties will still likely fall well short of a majority in Catalonia’s highly fractious parliament and will have to rely on the support of others to govern the region. Current polling gives a narrow majority to all the separatist parties combined.
In an interview with Reuters, Puigdemont said: “A month ago, it was a pipe dream—the polls had us in distant third place. Now we are neck-and-neck with the Socialists. There is a serious chance for my party to win.”
If he is able to reclaim the Catalan presidency, he will almost certainly push Madrid for more concessions, including a new independence referendum. “If we have more strength, our goals are closer,” he said.
Puigdemont fled Spain following a failed bid to win independence for Catalonia in 2017. Courts ruled that an independence referendum organised by Puigdemont’s Catalan government was illegal, but the Catalan leader persuaded the region’s parliament to declare independence anyway. Spanish police swiftly crushed the separatist bid, and its leaders were prosecuted for sedition and misuse of public funds.
Spain’s current Socialist government under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has promised to pass an amnesty bill that will exonerate Puigdemont and other separatist leaders. The amnesty is expected to come into force in late May or early June, but will likely be subject to a court challenge.
After an inconclusive election last year, Sánchez was able to keep power after striking a deal with regional separatist parties to prop up his government. The deal included the highly controversial amnesty for the organisers of 2017’s illegal referendum, resulting in mass protests across Spain.
Puigdemont says that, if he has the votes in the Catalan parliament, he will risk arrest and return to claim the presidency even if the amnesty has not been implemented.
In a sign of increasing confidence, Puigdemont said the survival of Sánchez’s government “depends to a large part on our votes,” as he warned the Spanish prime minister against “dirty tricks” to take power in Catalonia, such as allying with the centre-right Partido Popular.
“That would be an untenable contradiction that would make the relationship untenable,” he told Reuters.
