Nine years after he fled abroad having led a failed attempt at secession by his Catalonia region, Carles Puigdemont, public enemy number one for many Spaniards, is believed to be on the verge of returning from self-exile.
The former Catalan president, Puigdemont has been based in Waterloo, Belgium, since overseeing an outlawed independence referendum in 2017. From there he has fought an exhaustive legal battle against the Spanish courts, which have tried to extradite him to face trial.
That battle appears to be reaching its climax: this week the constitutional court has started reviewing an appeal against a ruling that had prevented Puigdemont and several colleagues from benefiting from an amnesty introduced by the Spanish government in 2024. If the appeal is successful, as is widely anticipated, Puigdemont will be able to return to Spain without the threat of detention.
“After nine years we are a bit mistrustful of everything,” Gonzalo Boye, Puigdemont’s lawyer, told The Irish Times, when asked about the potential application of the amnesty. However, Boye said his client should be able to return in mid- or late-October if the appeal is successful.
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From his exile, the mop-topped Puigdemont (63) has also waged a non-stop propaganda campaign against Spain’s judiciary, casting it and the Spanish state in general as backward and vindictive.
He labelled the magistrates who have pursued him “coup-mongers in togas”. He has also suggested the spirit of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco is still alive – this summer, before the Pope’s visit to Spain, he called on followers to protest against “the rebirth of Francoist Catholicism, oppressor of minorities and accomplice to crimes against humanity”.
Yet Puigdemont appears to be aware that his northeastern region is now very different from the unstable place he left behind nearly a decade ago. He told The Sunday Times that he planned to immerse himself in “today’s Catalonia”, with a view to understanding its new reality.
Independence no longer dominates the political arena to the exclusion of almost all other issues, as it did in 2017. The failure of the region’s attempted breakaway and the arrival of a Socialist-led Spanish government willing to engage with Catalan nationalist parties has reduced tensions. Support for independence is at 45 per cent, according to a recent poll, roughly where it was a decade ago, but other issues such as housing and immigration are now more important for Catalan voters.
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Boye believes Puigdemont’s return will be problematic for Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, who introduced the amnesty in exchange for the parliamentary support of the exile’s Together for Catalonia (JxCat) party.
“In many parts of Spain nobody will forgive Sánchez for allowing president Puigdemont to return – including many of his own voters,” Boye said, acknowledging the Catalan politician’s bête noire status among Spanish unionists.
With a general election on the horizon, that could hamper Sánchez’s Socialists, who are already trailing in polls behind the conservative People’s Party (PP).
But Puigdemont must deal with his own challenges, most notably the emergence of the Catalan Alliance (AC), a far-right, pro-independence party whose fierce opposition to immigration has sent it soaring in polls, at the expense of his own centre-right JxCat.
“The rise of AC clearly reflects the political transformation in Catalonia: the demand for independence remains, but on a back burner, allowing the ideas of the far right to dominate,” noted Lola García, a political commentator for La Vanguardia newspaper.
Puigdemont’s party has sought to remain relevant on the immigration issue, demanding that controls over Catalonia’s borders be devolved to the regional government.
But, with hardline unionist parties well-positioned to take power in Spain in the coming months, the question many are asking is whether Puigdemont still has the appetite to defy Madrid and attempt to stir up secessionist feeling.
