On-the-run Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont took refuge in at least two different private flats during his recent trip to Spain. The revelations will cause further embarrassment to police,who failed to detain the ex-Catalan president despite him addressing a rally of hundreds of people.
Puigdemont spoke to a crowd at the Arc de Triomf, just metres from the Catalan parliament in central Barcelona, on the day that Salvador Illa, a member of Spain’s governing Socialist party, was invested as the first non-nationalist Catalan president in over a decade.
Immediately after the speech, Puigdemont fled and managed to evade a massive police operation despite facing a warrant for his arrest. He was later reported to have returned to Belgium. The episode caused serious embarrassment for Catalonia’s police, known as the Mossos d’Esquadra, with some critics accusing them of collusion.
Puigdemont had been living in exile in Belgium for seven years after organising an illegal referendum on the region’s independence from Spain. The warrant issued against him remains in place after a judge partially overturned an amnesty for separatists passed by the Spanish government.
Now Jordi Turull, general secretary of Puigdemont’s Junts per Catalunya,party, has given further details of the escape to radio station RAC1:
We met in North Catalonia [the Catalan-speaking region of southern France] on Tuesday 6th, two days before the plenary session. Around half past six in the afternoon we took the car and came to Barcelona.
Turull added that they arrived in Barcelona late in the afternoon and stayed in a flat, not leaving until Thursday, August 8th, the day of the investiture. He added that after the speech, Puigdemont left in a waiting car and went to an apartment to “wait” and decide whether to enter the Catalan parliament.
Until now, it was assumed that the car—which the Mossos lost track of—had taken the police’s target straight to the French border. However, it was while waiting in the apartment that Puigdemont decided to leave Catalonia, so he travelled to a second apartment, further away from the city centre, where he stayed until 8 p.m.
By that time, the Mossos had already abandoned “Operation Cage,” the police operation to catch the ex-Catalan president. It is not known whether either of the two apartments in question were the same as the one where he spent the previous day.
Puigdemont then left Barcelona sitting in the back of a car, from where he was never spotted by the police. Turull declined to give any details of the route they took.
The details will cause further embarrassment to Catalonia’s law enforcement, who called off the operation to arrest Spain’s most wanted man while he was still within its territory.
In a report released last week, the Mossos claimed “technical and formal errors” had led to them failing to arrest Puigdemont. They also admitted that three officers have been arrested for allegedly participating in his escape.
