BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was back in Belgium on Friday. His lawyer said: after he evaded arrest for the second time in seven years in Spain, with a dramatic collision with a getaway car after a public appearance in Barcelona.
Puigdemont made his long-awaited return to Spain this week despite an arrest warrant being issued for his role in a 2017 independence referendum that was declared illegal by Spanish courts.
In a stunning turn of events, he disappeared shortly after addressing hundreds of supporters in central Barcelona on Thursday, in front of almost as many journalists and police officers who wanted to arrest him after the speech.
Catalonia’s regional police chiefs, who had deployed 500 officers in preparation for the fugitive’s announced return, defended their actions after Puigdemont’s failure and said an investigation had been launched to find out what went wrong.
Joan Ignasi Elena, acting head of the Catalan Interior Ministry, which oversees the regional police Mossos D’Esquadra, defended the police and criticised Puigdemont.
“We did not expect that someone who is the main authority of (Catalonia) would behave so inappropriately,” Elena told journalists during a two-and-a-half-hour press conference.
According to Eduard Sallent, the leader of Mossos, the large crowd and the presence of local dignitaries, including the president of the Catalan parliament, who accompanied Puigdemont when he arrived to give his speech, made it difficult to detain him at that moment.
Police expected him to then march to the Catalan parliament, as Puigdemont himself and an announcer speaking to the crowd over loudspeakers had publicly announced. Police hoped there would be a better chance of executing the arrest warrant.
Instead, the Catalan leader ran off the stage to an adjacent tent where he put on a straw hat, like many of his supporters, and quickly got into a white car waiting for him.
Police chased the car but then lost sight of it, Sallent explained.
Two police officers were arrested for their involvement in the escape, including one whose car Puigdemont used to flee. One of them has since been released.
The white car Puigdemont fled in had a wheelchair in the front seat, reportedly to facilitate parking in disabled spaces, police said.
Puigdemont had announced on Wednesday that he planned to return to Spain. But Jordi Turull, a fellow separatist and member of Puigdemont’s legal team, told Catalan radio that Puigdemont had in fact been in Barcelona since Tuesday. Turull was in the car with Puigdemont when he fled, police said.
Gonzalo Boye, Puigdemont’s lead lawyer, told The Associated Press that his client was back in the Belgian city of Waterloo on Friday. An AP journalist who rang the doorbell at the home where Puigdemont had been living was told the Catalan politician was not there.
Elena, the head of Catalonia’s Interior Ministry and also a member of the left-wing separatist party Esquerra Republicana (ERC), questioned the purpose of Puigdemont’s “show”.
“What he did yesterday, what does it add? A farce, revenge… what does it bring to the independence movement?”
Puigdemont’s first escape from Spain in 2017 became a legend among his supporters and a huge source of embarrassment for Spanish law enforcement.
Earlier this year, Puigdemont denied hiding in the trunk of a car to avoid detection when he crossed the border after the 2017 referendum. The subsequent judicial crackdown left several of his supporters in jail until the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pardoned them.
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AP journalist Mark Carlson in Waterloo, Belgium, contributed to this report.
