A top Spanish judge on Friday demanded clarification from police and authorities about how fugitive Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was able to return to Spain despite an ongoing arrest warrant and then disappear again.
Supreme Court Judge Pablo Llarena, who issued the arrest warrant for Puigdemont, specifically requested answers from Catalonia’s regional police, the Mossos d’Esquadra.
Puigdemont, who fled abroad after a failed bid for Catalonia’s independence in 2017, ignored orders to return to Spain on Thursday and gave a speech to thousands of people gathered at the Catalan regional parliament in Barcelona before escaping.
He was expected to enter parliament for a vote on appointing a new leader for the wealthy northeastern region, but instead disappeared into the crowd.
Catalonia’s regional police have arrested two officers, including one of the officers who owned the car in which Puigdemont left the scene of the crime.
Police, who have launched a manhunt for the 61-year-old Puigdemont, have denied any collusion and said officers planned to arrest him “at the most appropriate time so as not to cause disorder”.
Puigdemont “took advantage of the large number of people around him and fled in a vehicle that the Mossos tried to stop but failed,” police said Thursday.
Judge Llarena also asked the Interior Ministry for details of the plan to arrest him at the border and of “the orders issued” to capture Puigdemont “after his escape”.
The judge wanted to know the names of “the officers responsible for designing the operation, those responsible for approving it and those charged with its execution or operational deployment”.
Puigdemont’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, told Catalan radio on Friday that his client had fled abroad again, but gave no details.
The secretary general of Puigdemont’s hardline JxCAT party, Jordi Turull, said that “he is going back to Waterloo”, the Belgian city where he spent most of the seven years of his self-imposed exile.
– ‘The law must be respected’ –
Puigdemont led the regional government in 2017, when it pushed through an independence referendum despite a court ban, followed by a short-lived declaration of independence.
Shortly after the failed struggle for independence, he fled Spain to avoid prosecution. Since then, he has lived in Belgium and recently in France.
In May, Spain’s parliament approved an amnesty law for those involved in the secession struggle, but the Supreme Court ruled on July 1 that the measure would not fully apply to Puigdemont.
Turull said Puigdemont had not planned to return to Catalonia and then escape, but that he changed his plans when he saw the huge security presence.
“It was not foreseen that there would be a police deployment that we have not seen before in Catalonia against the biggest criminal, terrorist and drug trafficker,” Turull told Catalan radio.
“The first scenario was that he could return and benefit from the amnesty law,” he added.
The leader of the main opposition party, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, called Puigdemont’s return to Spain an “unbearable humiliation” that damaged the country’s image.
Spanish Justice Minister Felix Bolanos said on Friday that Puigdemont’s arrest was “the responsibility of the Mossos”, whose job it is to enforce judicial orders in Catalonia.
“In Spain, the law must be respected and court orders must be followed,” the minister said.
The Catalan parliament on Thursday elected Salvador Illa of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists as the first non-independence leader of Catalonia since 2010.
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