Former Catalan President to return from seven year exile

Luke James

Former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont has announced he will return from a seven year exile despite pro-independence parties losing power for the first time in almost 15 years.

Salvador Illa, the leader of the Socialist party of Catalonia which won the highest number of seats in May’s elections, will be formally voted in as the new President of Catalonia tomorrow and will be the first Socialist to lead the country since 2010.

However, the vote looks set to be overshadowed by the return of Puigdemont. “I have to be there and I want to be there,” he said today. “That is why I have embarked on the return journey from exile.”

Puigdemont was one of seven politicians who left Catalonia in the days after the 2017 independence referendum to escape a crackdown by the Spanish authorities, which saw nine others politicians and civil society leaders jailed.

Amnesty law

The former president negotiated an amnesty law with the Spanish government last year while living in Belgium and has since returned to northern Catalonia, which is part of the French state.

However, Spain’s Supreme Court, which is controlled by a majority of conservative judges, last month refused to action the amnesty.

It means Puigdemont still faces arrest when he returns. According to Politico, Catalan police are even sweeping Barcelon’s sewers and increased security at the city’s zoo, which is next to the Parliament.

“In normal democratic conditions, for an MP like myself to attend the session, would be unnecessary, it would be irrelevant,” said Puigdemont in a video message. “But ours are not normal democratic conditions.”

Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia), the centrist party to which Puigdemont belongs, has called a demonstration near the Parliament in an effort to prevent his arrest.

It has brought a temporary halt to hostilities with other pro-independence parties, who have announced they will join the demonstration.

“Beyond ideologies, Catalans are fed up with our presidents being persecuted, executed or imprisoned,” said Lluís Llach, the folk singer who is Catalonia’s answer to Dafydd Iwan.

Protest

The protest comes just a week after the Spanish state annulled the legal charges under which Lluís Companys, the President of Catalonia during the civil war, was shot by Franco’s troops.

Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, the centre-left pro-independence party, has been leading the Catalan government for the first time since Companys was killed.

However, they were forced to call early elections when Junts per Catalunya pulled out of a coalition over differences in vision over how independence should be achieved.

Junts, which favours a more unilateral approach, won three seats, while Esquerra Republicana, which prefers negotiation with Madrid, lost 13 seats.

It meant that democratic pro-independence parties, which also includes the left-wing La CUP, with just 59 seats in the 135 seat Parliament. A far-right pro-independence party also won two seats.

With pro-independence forces nine seats short of a majority, Esquerra Republicana chose to negotiate a deal with the Socialist party rather than face new elections.

New powers

The agreement includes major new powers over the collection and management of taxes, protection for the system of Catalan language immersion schooling, and a promise of negotiations over the future of Catalonia’s place in the Spanish state.

The deal, which will not see Esquerra Republicana enter the government, won the support for 53% of the party’s supporters after a divisive debate.

“We said yes to fiscal sovereignty for our country so that we can end the fiscal deficit, which has been impeding us for decades, and to have more resources to invest in our public services,” said Marta Rovira, the general secretary of Esquerra Republicana.

The new Catalan President, Salvador Illa, “is a person who is committed to dialogue, who will turn the page and open a new chapter that will not be so marked by identarian debates, division and confrontation,” Laura Ballarin Cereza, a Catalan Socialist party member of the European Parliament, told Nation.Cymru.

But Dani Cornellà, a member of parliament for La CUP, said he would be a “right-wing and pro-Spanish president” who would end the independence “process.”

Professor Jesús Palomar i Baget of the University of Barcelona said the process “won’t stop because there’s a Socialist government but it will set it back in the mid-term.”