Status: 09/24/2021 02:43 a.m.
Catalonia’s ex-Prime Minister Puigdemont has been arrested in Sardinia. It is unclear whether the authorities will extradite him to Spain. The dialogue between the central government in Madrid and the separatists in Barcelona could become more difficult.
Former Catalan Prime Minister and MEP, Carles Puigdemont, has been arrested by Italian police in Sardinia. Puigdemont’s office announced in a statement that he had traveled from Brussels to Alghero to attend the international “Adifolk” exhibition and to meet with the Regional President of Sardinia and an ombudsman.
“When he arrived at Alghero airport, he was stopped by the Italian border police. Tomorrow he will be brought before the judges of the Sassari Court of Appeal, which will decide on his release or extradition,” the statement said.
Lawyer announces urgent application
Puigdemont’s attorney Gonzalo Boye confirmed the detention on Twitter. It was based on a European arrest warrant dated October 14, 2019, which was suspended for legal reasons – as determined by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
According to Puigdemont’s Belgian lawyer Simon Bekaert, an attempt is now being made to take legal action against the arrest in Italy. At the same time, an urgent application to the ECJ is already being prepared to restore Puigdemont’s parliamentary immunity as a member of the European Union, said the lawyer at the dpa news agency.
Separatists are mad
The arrest is likely to make the dialogue that has just begun between the Spanish central government in Madrid and the separatist regional government in Barcelona about resolving the longstanding crisis even more difficult. The current regional president Luis Aragones wrote on social networks that he condemned the arrest sharply, while others wrote of Spain’s fraud against the judiciary. Almost everyone is calling for Catalonia to finally become independent. The Spanish government has not yet commented.
Spain accuses Puigdemont and other separatists of rebellion among other things because of the illegal independence referendum in Catalonia on October 1, 2017 and the attempted secession of the region. The former head of the Catalan government is threatened with sedition proceedings. In 2019, the country convicted several leaders of the Catalan independence movement for sedition and issued prison terms of up to 13 years.
Puigdemont is the determining force in the camp of the separatists, who do not give a negotiated solution to the conflict a chance and want to enforce the independence of the region if necessary against the resistance of the rest of Spain.
Immunity has been lifted
In March of this year, the European Parliament lifted the immunity of Puigdemont and two other former cabinet members. All three are wanted by Spain with international arrest warrants because of their role in organizing the independence referendum in Catalonia in 2017.
The ECJ in Luxembourg had rejected the provisional legal protection requested by Puigdemont in the form of a suspension of the waiver of immunity. After fleeing to Belgium in 2017, Puigdemont went into exile and formally became a member of the EU Parliament in June 2019.