Fugitive Catalan separatist leader risks arrest if he keeps to his word on Thursday after seven years in exile

The fugitive Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont has said he will return to Spain on Thursday, risking likely arrest in a move that could destabilise the country’s ruling coalition.

Puigdemont, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium for seven years after organising an illegal independence referendum in Catalonia, has said that he will be at the Catalan parliament in Barcelona on Thursday as it swears in the region’s new leader.

U-turn ‘stupefies’ conservative party, which has condemned amnesty for those involved in Catalan independence push

Members of Spain’s conservative People’s party say they are “stupefied” after their party leader announced he was in favour of granting a conditional pardon to former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont for his role in the illegal independence push in 2017.

Under the leadership of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP has consistently condemned Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, for offering an amnesty to Puigdemont and dozens of others involved in the independence movement in exchange for the votes of his party, Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia).

Architect of Catalonia’s illegal referendum of 2017 has signed deal to support Spain’s socialists in return for amnesty

Despite the fast-moving, wildly unpredictable and frequently improbable turns Spanish politics has taken of late, very few pundits could have predicted the scenes that played out in Belgium on Thursday.

A little after 2pm, a 60-year-old Catalan politician and fugitive from Spanish justice addressed a packed conference at the Brussels press club. As reporters brimmed with questions that would go unanswered, Carles Puigdemont appeared to be relishing his moment.

Former Catalan separatist leader says he is ‘very happy’ after walking free from Sardinian court

Catalonia’s former separatist leader Carles Puigdemont has walked out of a Sardinian courthouse after a judge delayed a decision on Spain’s extradition request and said he was free to travel.

Puigdemont walked out with his lawyer, shook hands and embraced supporters, saying he was “very happy”, as he got in a van and was whisked away.

Catalan Socialist party finishes first as secessionists win more than half the vote on turnout of only 53%

Catalan pro-independence parties have increased their parliamentary majority following a regional election in which the unionist Socialists took the largest share of the vote and the far-right Vox party outperformed its conservative rivals to win its first seats in the northeastern Spanish region.

Sunday’s election was overshadowed by the Covid pandemic and dominated by the continuing debate over independence that has shaped and divided Catalan politics for the past decade.

It could have been very different. But the 2017 declaration of independence threw away the campaign’s moral advantage

Some things are impossible. Catalan independence is currently one of them. The stiff jail sentences handed down to the leaders of the separatist campaign that peaked in 2017 with a banned referendum, police violence and a fudged declaration of independence make that clearer than ever.

There are huge practical obstacles to independence, starting with the many hurdles written into Spain’s constitution. Overcoming these requires massive support in Catalonia itself; but the separatist leaders who orchestrated a head-on collision with the law never had anything like that. The jail sentences are for sedition, but their real problem is hubris.