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10 October 2021 2.00 h

Puigdemont again detained and freed

Yet another EU country rejects Spain’s attempts to extradite former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, who was briefly detained and then released on a visit to Sardinia at the end of September

The Ital­ian po­lice ar­rested the 130th pres­i­dent of the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment and now MEP, Car­les Puigde­mont, on the night of Thurs­day Sep­tem­ber 23 when he ar­rived in Al­ghero to at­tend a fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing Cata­lan cul­ture. The town on the is­land of Sar­dinia has re­tained its Cata­lan roots and Cata­lan is still spo­ken there. Puigde­mont was re­leased at 6 pm the fol­low­ing day under the con­di­tion that he tes­tify be­fore the court on 4 Oc­to­ber, al­though he was free to travel any­where, as no re­stric­tions were im­posed upon him, ac­cord­ing to his Ital­ian lawyer, Agosti­nan­gelo Mar­ras. In fact, he sub­se­quently at­tended a meet­ing of a Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment com­mit­tee on Mon­day 27.

Dozens of peo­ple gath­ered in front of the prison to wel­come Puigde­mont upon his re­lease. “I thought this might hap­pen, but we also knew how it could end, be­cause the de­ci­sion of the Eu­ro­pean court is very clear. It’s just that Spain never misses an op­por­tu­nity to do the ridicu­lous,” Puigde­mont com­mented when he emerged from the prison gates.

The pro­ceed­ings are on­go­ing, but the Ital­ian judge and pros­e­cu­tor ac­cepted Puigde­mont’s de­fence that the Eu­ro­pean Gen­eral Court (EGC) had de­ter­mined he can­not be ar­rested, in what con­sti­tutes yet an­other slap in the face for the Span­ish Supreme Court judge in the case against Puigde­mont, Pablo Llarena.

What started out as a fright for Puigde­mont turned out to be an­other vic­tory on the in­ter­na­tional front. When he was de­tained in Ger­many in 2018, Puigde­mont spent 12 nights in prison and the process took four months, but he was not yet an MEP at the time.

Strained re­la­tion­ship

The ar­rest sparked an avalanche of po­lit­i­cal re­ac­tions and once again put a strain on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Span­ish and Cata­lan gov­ern­ment part­ners cur­rently sit­ting around the di­a­logue table. Both Span­ish PM Pedro Sánchez and ERC Pres­i­dent and for­mer po­lit­i­cal pris­oner Oriol Jun­queras called for calm, the for­mer stat­ing that it was “more im­por­tant than ever” to seek so­lu­tions through di­a­logue, a marked dif­fer­ence from his pre­de­ces­sor.

Mean­while, speak­ing to the press, cur­rent Cata­lan pres­i­dent Pere Aragonés noted that the ar­rest “does not help the con­flict res­o­lu­tion process at all” and does not con­tribute to “trust be­tween the par­ties”. Aragonés de­manded the with­drawal of the Eu­ro­pean ar­rest war­rants against those in exile and stressed that the only so­lu­tion is self-de­ter­mi­na­tion and amnesty. “The Span­ish state has de­ceived the Eu­ro­pean court,” Aragonés warned. Mean­while, Cata­lan gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Vic­to­ria Alsina sent a let­ter to the Pres­i­dent of the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment, Ital­ian David Sas­soli, to in­ter­cede in the af­fair.

Puigde­mont was due to ap­pear be­fore the court at noon on Fri­day 24, but his team of lawyers asked for the hear­ing to be post­poned so that the Ital­ian court and pros­e­cu­tor’s of­fice could have time to study the case. He was sub­se­quently re­leased on the con­di­tion that he re­turn to tes­tify on Oc­to­ber 4.

The for­mer Cata­lan Pres­i­dent’s lawyer, Gon­zalo Boye, said that he would ask the EGC to re­store his im­mu­nity as an MEP, while Llarena sent the Ital­ian au­thor­i­ties the “ac­tive” Eu­ro­pean order is­sued in 2019.

Puigde­mont’s lawyer warned that the EGC “will feel de­ceived” by Spain’s tac­tics be­cause the court lifted the MEP’s im­mu­nity “in the be­lief that all par­ties were telling the truth and act­ing in good faith.” “This has been seen not to be the case, since the Supreme Court is doing its own thing and the King­dom of Spain some­thing else,” Boye said, re­call­ing that the Span­ish At­tor­ney Gen­eral’s Of­fice had in­formed the Eu­ro­pean Court the ar­rest war­rants had been sus­pended.

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Differing versions

The version of events given by the Spanish prosecutor was that Puigdemont could not be arrested in the exercise of his work as an MEP, as Puigdemont’s lawyer Gonzalo Boye stressed that the former Catalan president was scheduled to meet different Alghero authorities in his capacity as member of the European Parliament. “The Spanish prosecution has been wrong in its interpretations for four years,” the lawyer stated. And so internationalisation of the conflict between Spain and Catalonia continues to move from courtroom to courtroom.

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