On 8 August 2024, President Carles Puigdemont i Casamajó will return to Catalonia from his almost seven-year exile to take part in the investiture debate in the Catalan parliament in Barcelona to elect a new president of the Catalan government (Generalitat de Catalunya).
Due to a Spanish arrest warrant, it is expected that President Puigdemont will be arrested in the coming days on the orders of a Spanish judge. He himself assumes that his arrest will take place. He does not see his return as "victimisation", but as an act of direct confrontation with a demophobic regime that violates human rights and continually breaches the organic law of the Spanish state.
In the event of his arrest, President Puigdemont will not enter into any negotiations with the Spanish state about his freedom and, in particular, will not support any decision that could be interpreted as an abandonment of the Catalan people's aspirations for sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law.
His political activities are not a reaction to the Spanish repression suffered by Catalonia and many Catalans, but are aimed at realising the sovereignty of the Catalan people, whose freely elected parliament solemnly proclaimed Catalonia's independence from Spain on 27 October 2017 without violating international law or the Spanish constitution. President Puigdemont is in favour of realising this valid declaration of independence in the coming years in the form of an independent Catalan Republic and thus overcoming Spanish repression in Catalonia once and for all.
For seven years, the Spanish state has been trying to arrest President Puigdemont under pretences and with a procedure that was and is not in accordance with the rule of law. As is well known, Spain has been unsuccessful to date and has been defeated in corresponding court proceedings before the judiciary of other countries of the European Union that are governed by the rule of law. The difference between the independent judiciary of other countries and the Spanish legal system was clearly demonstrated in these decisions.
Spain has violated mandatory United Nations law, as recognised by several decisions of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the United Nations Human Rights Committee in the case of the Catalan political prisoners, without complying with the obligations imposed on it by the competent bodies of the United Nations. Now Spain is even preparing to violate a recently passed amnesty law, according to which President Puigdemont should not be arrested in Spain either. A former United Nations special envoy pointed out years ago that law enforcement officers in Spain and the other countries of the European Union may refuse instructions and orders to arrest the Catalan president at any time and without personal detriment on grounds of conscience in order to avoid making themselves liable to prosecution by participating in an illegal act.
In 2017, President Carles Puigdemont and part of his government, which had been unlawfully declared deposed by Spain, went into exile in Belgium to ensure the institutional continuity of the centuries-old Generalitat of Catalonia in the face of the unlawful repressive measures taken by the Spanish state in response to the independence referendum held on 1 October of the same year in accordance with Article 1 of the two major United Nations human rights covenants, which Spain is also obliged to observe as mandatory, overriding law. This made it possible to represent the interests of the Catalan people in the public eye.
Since then, President Puigdemont has spent seven years demonstrating to the world that the Catalan people are striving for freedom and sovereignty and that Spain is unconstitutionally and illegally denying the Catalan people their human right to self-determination. His fight for the sovereignty of his people has always been non-violent and peaceful.
The events of tomorrow, Thursday, will be a turning point for Catalonia and Spain. The likely arrest of President Puigdemont would not only be another act of political repression, but would also be blatant proof to the whole world of the Spanish judicial system's refusal to respect and comply with the principle of separation of powers, democratic decisions and the laws passed by the Congress of Deputies, such as the recent amnesty law.
The current situation in Spain can justifiably be described as a hybrid coup that is plunging democracy and Spain's legal system, which is already only partially functioning in accordance with the rule of law, into a deep crisis, the effects of which will extend far beyond the borders of Catalonia and will shake the credibility of the entire European Union if it continues to describe the violation of the rule of law in Spain as an internal affair of one of its member states and remains inactive. The anti-democratic, anti-liberal attitude of the Spanish state apparatus, which is destroying the rule of law, will not remain without consequences and will attract international attention.
For more than seven years, the Spanish state has been attempting to massively influence and direct media coverage of the conflict between Spain and Catalonia. It is to be hoped that the world's press, which is independent of Spain, will follow events in Spain and Catalonia closely and report objectively in order to provide transparent, balanced coverage at this critical moment for the future of Catalonia.
Josep Rull: «"If President Puigdemont is arrested, I cannot accept the plenary session to proceed normally" - Interview with the President of the Parliament of Catalonia, Josep Rull, two days before Salvador Illa's inauguration», in: Vilaweb, 6. 8. 2024.
Speech by President Carles Puigdemont at the Arc de Triomf in Barcelona on August 8, 2024 (in the following video from the 27th minute):
https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/directe-president-puigdemont-torna-catalunya/