Jordi Amat, 11 August 2024, Barcelona
Image: Puigdemont reappears in Spain before a crowd gathered at the doors of the Parliament, this Thursday in Barcelona.Photo: MASSIMILIANO MINOCRI | Video: EPV
The path travelled by “the fugitive” until his momentary appearance on Thursday in Barcelona’s Passeig Lluís Companys has been labyrinthine.
The split between his self-mythologising story and the sceptical perception of the results of the ‘procés’ has distanced him from the present, with a buffoonish end to the season.
In November 2023, Politico magazine selected Donald Tusk as the most influential person on the continent. In the list, the 27 other chosen figures were organised into three categories: doers, dreamers and disruptors. In this last section, between the technocrat who saved Russia from economic bankruptcy and Viktor Orbán, the magazine’s editors singled out a politician they defined as “the revolutionary”: Carles Puigdemont. Readers, if they did not know him, learnt that the MEP was living in exile because the Spanish justice system was trying to
exile because Spanish justice was trying to arrest him since “the illegal secession referendum”. But his disruptive capacity was not linked to the pro-independence cause. The choice of “this man on the run” was because of “his great influence on Spanish politics”.
Half a year earlier, such a statement would have been unimaginable.
The path travelled by “the fugitive” – to use the simplifying label – until his momentary appearance on Thursday in Barcelona’s Passeig Lluís Companys has been a labyrinthine one. It began on the night of Sunday 29 October 2017. Puigdemont left his home on the outskirts of Girona in a car driven by a policeman, changed vehicles, crossed the border in a Mazda and drove for 11 hours until he arrived in Brussels. Two days earlier he had been dismissed as president of the Generalitat by virtue of the application of Article 155 of the Constitution. He was 54 years old. Since then, Catalonia, Spain and Europe have changed. Puigdemont is now 61. The promise of return, formulated on several occasions, has been one of the elements shaping his character. He returns to the future from yesterday’s world.
“If you want the president back, vote for the president”. This was the slogan of the Junts electoral campaign for the elections of 27 December 2017. The turnout was massive and Ciutadans won, but the majority was pro-independence, and the most voted list of the bloc was headed by Puigdemont (948,233 votes). Although there was already an arrest warrant issued by the Supreme Court, would he risk returning to be present at his investiture debate? Rumours multiplied, the option of telematic voting was raised. The government ignored what the Council of State had said and, faced with the possibility of his investiture, lodged an appeal with the Constitutional Court. On 30 January 2018, the Republican Roger Torrent – president of the chamber for two weeks – suspended the plenary session in which Puigdemont could have been re-elected president. There would be no restitution. The cycle of institutional disobedience was over.
That evening, Puigdemont recorded a message and then retired to his room in his flat in Waterloo. Using the Signal app, he sent messages to Toni Comín. The former health minister, who is also based in Belgium, was taking part in an event of the pro-independence New Flemish Alliance party. Comín opened his phone and read them. “Moncloa’s plan triumphs”, he said, “I suppose it’s clear to you that this is over”. The next morning, Ana Rosa Quintana opened her news programme by showing the captures. It is one of the few moments in which public opinion has known a dejected Puigdemont.
After the failure of the investiture, he proposed another way to continue leading the self-government from a distance. A technical government in Barcelona and, on the outside, an alternative institutionality to the statutory one: the Council of the Republic. It did not work either. This Council, which still exists, has been reformulated according to its strategies and the different roles played by Puigdemont. Because the legitimacy he claimed for himself ceased to be his with the investiture of Quim Torra as president and the end of the intervention of the Generalitat. What to do? Redefine his character in order to survive.
He would be the leader of a pro-independence movement that resisted the persecution of the judiciary to preserve the legitimacy of the referendum of 1 October and the validity of the declaration of independence on the 27th. He has never contemplated that the unilateral decisions he took would have had negative social, institutional and economic consequences for Catalonia. While the majority of Catalan society forgot the days of fervour, frustrated or relieved, he needed to melt into that mythical memory, to present himself and be recognised as the embodiment of dignity. This split between his self-mythologising narrative and the sceptical perception of the results of the procés would gradually alienate him from the present. He tried to bridge the growing gap between himself and reality through emotionalism and by reclaiming a lost unity in the pro-independence bloc, which, of course, he was supposed to lead. What he theorised as the strategy of confrontation against the state were also survival manoeuvres.
After being monitored by a group of CNI agents, he was arrested by the German police on 25 March 2018. It was a key moment. He first spent weeks in jail and then the judge granted him parole. In mid-July, the Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein Regional Court expressed its readiness to extradite him. Not for rebellion – the crime for which the leaders of the procès leaders, who were serving pre-trial detention in Spain, were accused – but only for embezzlement. Then, Llarena said no. It seemed too little to him. Now, emptying the amnesty law of meaning, the judge is prosecuting him for this crime. So for Puigdemont it was a victory: the man who in 2017 twice outwitted the state was dribbling the judge’s persecution to save his freedom. He had metamorphosed into the fugitive seeking protection from European justice. There is something of a reality show in his adventures over the years. An endless struggle, a procedural labyrinth of appeals and more appeals.
Meanwhile, Spanish politics entered a new phase: the PSOE presented a motion of censure. The Junts parliamentary group in Madrid, which Puigdemont did not control, became involved in the operation. Pablo Iglesias contacted him. “The conversation with him was not a conversation with a political leader who manages the affairs of the day, but with an exile”, explained the leader of Podemos. Independence support for Pedro Sánchez would change the game board. The de-judicialisation strategy would displace Puigdemont’s place as a resister, but he had launched a new battle: his candidacy for the European Parliament elections held on 26 May 2019.
Another season of exile. “If I have the title of MEP”, he declared, “I will return to Catalonia”. He claimed that the seat was a guarantee of immunity, also in Spain. But a month before the referendum, the Central Electoral Board tried to prevent him from registering. They failed to catch him. Puigdemont’s list swept the board: 987,149 votes.
The road travelled by the fugitive until Thursday has been Labyrinthine
He never thought that his decisions would have social consequences
Afterwards, they were banned from attending the constitutive session of the new legislature. Despite the thousands of demonstrators who travelled to Strasbourg to support them in front of the Parliament, Puigdemont’s lawyer advised them not to cross the French border to avoid arrest. He could not be accredited until 20 December. As he was legally an MEP, thanks to immunity, he would have freedom of movement.
Although he did not cross the border, he approached the Spanish border. In early 2020, when the covid was beginning to spread silently across Europe, the Council for the Republic organised a massive event in Perpignan to celebrate the fact that Puigdemont, Comín and Ponsatí had already been accredited as MEPs. It was the first time that the south of France
became a place of pilgrimage to see Puigdemont. Thousands of people arrived in buses and cars. The journey was also a journey in time: it allowed us to experience the sensation of living in yesterday’s world, in the world of the continued mobilisation of the procés. It was already anti-political adrenaline, as Pau Luque diagnosed.
The acceleration of the change of epoch with the pandemic and later the pardons were making the character anachronistic. Nor did their activity in the European Parliament allow them to play a major role: they did not belong to any group. Esquerra Republicana was beginning its virtuous electoral cycle and Jordi Sànchez, as secretary general of Junts, negotiated with Pere Aragonés the pact to form a government. Even his own party could do without him. He did not forgive this disavowal. Sànchez fell and, in a coalition crisis, Puigdemont decided the position of the militancy: Junts left the Government of the Generalitat, went into opposition – he even proposed a motion of censure to the PSC – and, in parliamentary activity, undermined the unity of the pro-independence movement. He ruled his party – “an absolute monarchy”, say the opposition – and he was the only interlocutor – as Josep Sánchez Llibre, president of the Catalan employers’ association, was able to see – but his party was becoming less and less important.
On 5 July 2023, the General Court of the European Union lifted the immunity of MEPs Puigdemont and Toni Comín. In the press conference that followed, together with the two of them and the lawyer Gonzalo Boye, his colleague Clara Ponsatí gave a very severe assessment of the legal battle waged by the pro-independence movement in the European institutions, an argument that had been essential in the internationalisation of the conflict according to the story constructed by Puigdemont. “Today is the end of a stage”, declared Ponsatí. The following day, Pedro Sánchez stated on television that “Carles Puigdemont in the past was a problem for Spain, today he is an anecdote”. The night of 23 July it began to be sensed that the investiture would depend on the man Sánchez had pledged to stop.
Of course, the week before, in an interview with Antoni Bassas for the daily Ara, Puigdemont also made a promise. “Pedro Sánchez will not be prime minister with the votes of Junts. He cannot be. Why? For many reasons, but one is very clear: Pedro Sánchez lies. He lies and he fails to deliver. And since he has done so on several occasions, exactly what incentive do we have to make a liar and an impostor prime minister? When the results were final, Sánchez needed the 7 deputies of Junts (392,634 votes). The game board changed again. “It is necessary to maintain discretion and extreme caution,” he wrote on the X network. Puigdemont did not refuse to negotiate, but he would be the negotiator. Nor did he have counterweights in his party.
To negotiate, the disruptor, ignored for years, had to be recognised as an interlocutor by the Spanish political system. The renewed relationship between Junts and the Basque Nationalist Party served as a link for the PSOE to reach Puigdemont. The MEP, advised by Boye, established the approval of the amnesty law as a goal. The main socialist negotiator would be Santos Cerdán, Puigdemont vetoed Salvador Illa. First there was the photo of Yolanda Díaz in Brussels. Then came Santos Cerdán in an office decorated with a large photo of the police charges of 1 October. He had returned to the stage that he dominates best: the centre of media interest. He made the most of it.
The change of era and the pardons have made the character anachronistic.
During those months, the amnesty negotiations took place. For him, the discursive reworking was no less important: he needed to provide himself with a narrative and a staging that would make the independence movement believe that he was not giving up confrontation, but at the same time, he was making a pact. At his conference in Brussels, there was maximum expectation. It was his official resurrection and, on stage, behind the lectern, he naturally presented himself as president. He recycled the processist ideological framework and the PSOE accepted it, as was made clear in an agreement sown with historical fallacies. That was the least of it. There would be an investiture and amnesty, there would be the promise of “a historic agreement for the resolution of the political conflict” and, sooner rather than later, there would be a return because it should now involve far fewer criminal risks. The question was how and when to capitalise on the return.
The Aragonès government was unable to approve the budget (Junts voted no) and the elections were brought forward. Puigdemont and his party knew that their time had come. Nobody builds better campaigns; nobody penetrates the convergent collective imaginary better. He set up his centre of operations in Catalunya Nord. Every day the same rally, every day the arrival of coaches from all over Catalonia as if they had been organised by the Imserso, every day the sensations of the glory of the procés were relived for a few hours. People, as if coming out of an attraction, took photos with him. He would return on the day of the investiture and, if he did not win, he would leave politics, although he did not engage in emotional blackmail. He was the man who did not give up, but he was also the man who did not debate he did not confront a single candidate.
He said that he would return on the day of the investiture and that, if he did not win, he would leave politics.
Elections. Despite the adrenaline of the polls, there was no pro-independence majority: Junts 681,470 votes. That night, feeling like a “kingmaker” (the expression is from Politico), Puigdemont said he wanted to be president. His scenario, typical of another era, did not come true either.
Puigdemont was trapped in his own promise. The PSOE asked him not to return, but he said no. The journalist Núria Orriols revealed that Jaume Giró – the only leading figure in the party who is not a Puigdemont supporter – also asked him not to return in order to be arrested. No. When a delegation from Esquerra told him of the pact they had reached with the PSC, he rebelled, as Lola García has revealed. After the agreement was ratified by the republican rank and file, he exploded. The letter signed on 3 August in Waterloo was a direct accusation of treason against the ERC and the umpteenth exercise in self-mythologising to convince his own people that the exceptional battle of exile had been worth it. It was a cry of rage when confronted with the reality of today’s world.
Catalonia was not the Catalonia of 2017; independence did not have the capacity to mobilise that it had. Why has Carles Puigdemont returned? He did not want to act as the hero of the retreat. He is not Josep Tarradellas, stabiliser of a Transition process and, at the same time, connector of the legitimacy of self-government with the present. Nor has he sought to be a reconciler of Catalan society or to strengthen the power of the Generalitat. Neither a builder nor a dreamer. A disruptor. But to return only to escape? If he once thought of taking a risk to recover the epic, neither. The ten-minute incursion, without much ended up being a picaresque, slapstick, caricatural end to the season, while institutional normality continued its course.
The ‘ex-president’ assumes that Illa is legitimate
Carles Puigdemont is reluctant to consider the procés dead. Although he does admit that “a new political stage” has opened in Catalonia with Salvador Illa at the head of the Generalitat, which “is the result of legitimate decisions”. The former president himself, once again on the run from the Spanish justice system, said this in an eight-minute video published on the social network X, after the Socialist’s inauguration ceremony. In the same video, he attacks the ERC, which he says has chosen to “accommodate itself”; against the
The Mossos, for setting up a device to try to arrest him at the doors of the Parliament, despite the fact that he is on the run, and against the Spanish justice system.
The reasoning now used by the former Catalan president is that the process will end with independence. However, he has no choice but to assume that, after the regional elections of 12 May, in which the pro-independence movement lost its parliamentary majority, “a phase has ended. A phase in which, over the last few years we have been aligned, on the one hand, with organised civil society and, on the other, with the political forces of the pro-independence spectrum”.
In the video, the fugitive politician claims, once again, that he is at his residence in Waterloo. However, throughout yesterday morning he was not seen leaving the building. M. V. G
https://elpais.com/espana/2024-08-11/regreso-al-futuro-de-carles-puigdemont.html
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