The former MEP faces immediate arrest if he returns to the country he fled in October 2017 to avoid prison, three days after the failed Catalan declaration of independence.
Former president of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont announced Wednesday that he is on his way back to Spain after years of avoiding the Spanish justice system.
The separatist leader reiterated the trip to his native country was his last option to try to avoid what he said was a pro-Spanish regional government in Catalonia, which is set to take over this week after a vote in the regional parliament.
“I have to be there, and I want to be. That is why I have undertaken the journey back from exile,” he said in a video on social media platform X on Wednesday.
Earlier in the week, the separatist leader posted a three-page letter on the same platform stating that after seven years of exile in Belgium and France, he would return to his homeland imminently to “defend against Spanish repression”.
“If I get arrested, it won’t be the first time,” he said, referring to stints of imprisonment in Italy and Germany due to his parliamentary activity.
The former MEP faces immediate arrest if he returns to the country he fled in October 2017.
Puigdemont travelled to Belgium three days after the failed Catalan declaration of independence to avoid prison. The failed referendum resulted in days of protests and hundreds of arrests, including those of his political colleagues.
Following the suspension of Catalonia’s autonomy and the dismissal of its government by Mariano Rajoy’s conservative administration, he concealed himself in a car’s trunk and made his way north to avoid charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement.
