Catalonia’s hardline separatist hero Puigdemont returns to the spotlight

Just over half a decade ago he was in the eye of a constitutional storm, as the figurehead of Catalonia’s bid for independence. Now, after several years in self-imposed exile, Carles Puigdemont is once again at the centre of the Spanish political arena.

An inconclusive general election in July has made his Together for Catalonia (JxCat) party kingmaker. The support of its seven representatives in the Spanish congress – one fewer than after the previous election in 2019 – would be enough to allow Socialist Pedro Sánchez to form a new government. The alternative would be a repeat election in January.

Sánchez’s Socialists and his left-wing allies of Sumar are now locked in talks with both the right-of-centre JxCat and the more moderate separatists of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), which governs the north-eastern region and has previously provided parliamentary support to the prime minister. They are negotiating the creation of a possible amnesty law benefitting independence leaders – including Puigdemont – and activists who face legal action linked to the region’s failed secession attempt of 2017.

If JxCat and ERC are satisfied with the result, they will support Sánchez in the parliamentary investiture vote he faces in the coming weeks.

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Recently, Puigdemont (60) re-posted a text he first published on social media in early September in which he said that “Spain has a complex dilemma to resolve”.

Either there will be another election, he said, or Madrid “makes a deal with a party which … has never renounced and nor will it renounce the unilateral route [to independence]”.

Such declarations, made from his home in Belgium, consolidate his status among hardline nationalist supporters as their biggest hope of advancing the independence cause. They also make him a target of the ire of Spain’s fiercely unionist political right.

The leader of the far-right Vox party, Santiago Abascal, described Puigdemont as “a criminal and a fugitive”, while the right-wing commentator Carlos Navarro Antolín called him “a blackmailer and a coward”.

Even beyond the political sphere he stirs strong feelings, with the Catalan filmmaker Isabel Coixet, a critic of the independence movement, calling him “a loony who lives in Waterloo”.

Puigdemont was relatively unknown until 2016, when he went from being mayor of Girona to president of Catalonia. His appointment was part of efforts to ensure a united front among the independence movement following the insistence by some nationalists that the conservative Artur Mas be replaced as regional leader. Speculation that Puigdemont might be a puppet of Mas turned out to be misguided and he pushed ahead with a plan to hold a referendum on October 1st, 2017, defying court orders and the wishes of the then conservative Spanish government.

That ballot, which was interrupted in some polling stations by police attacking voters, saw a turnout of only 43 per cent, but its repercussions were huge.

Several weeks later, the Catalan parliament declared independence on the back of the result, as the Spanish government introduced direct rule.

While several colleagues in his regional government ended up in prison for their part in the referendum, Puigdemont fled to Belgium, hiding in the boot of a car as he escaped Spain. Since then he has waged a propaganda campaign across Europe, presenting Spain as an undemocratic, repressive state while successfully avoiding attempts by the supreme court to extradite him.

“We’ve had to be strong, in terms of our state of mind, in order to handle these six years,” Toni Comín, a former minister in Puigdemont’s regional government who has also been living in Belgium, told The Irish Times. Puigdemont was not available to comment.

“You can’t let yourself get too down when you’re in exile, so we’ve always kept our spirits up,” Comín added. “We have never lost the political conviction that this could turn out well, that there could be an opportunity.”

Both men are now MEPs, although their parliamentary immunity and that of their colleague Clara Ponsatí has been revoked at the request of the Spanish judiciary, a decision they are appealing. Puigdemont’s influence on Catalan and Spanish politics had waned in his absence but the general election result has thrust him back into the spotlight as his party negotiates with Sánchez’s Socialists.

While the stakes are high for Spain’s acting prime minister, there is also plenty at stake for the former Catalan leader, not least his standing as a hero for the independence movement’s least compromising factions.

Dolors Feliu, president of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), a rank-and-file organisation that advocates a unilateral route to secession, says the fact he was regional president at the time of the 2017 referendum “has a great symbolism for the independence movement”.

“We didn’t achieve independence but we did make big strides forward and he has kept that flame burning in exile,” she told The Irish Times.

Substantial progress has reportedly been made in negotiating the details of an amnesty law ahead of the November deadline for Sánchez’s crunch investiture vote. However, the nationalists have also made a formal demand that Sánchez must “work to make effective the conditions for the holding of [an independence] referendum” in order to secure their parliamentary support.

Feliu is concerned that the referendum issue, in particular, could get buried by compromise, given that Sánchez has flatly ruled out the possibility of holding such a vote.

“President Puigdemont is conscious of his status as leader of the independence movement, with his position [on self-determination], and our hope is that he does not give ground on that,” she said.

While a successfully negotiated amnesty would see him able to return to Spain, if he were seen to make too many concessions, Puigdemont’s image as the scourge of unionism could crumble.

A recent consultative ballot showed that three-quarters of members of the Council of the Republic – a private entity led by Puigdemont promoting Catalan independence – opposed supporting Sánchez in an investiture. Turnout was low and the result is not binding but it does reflect the mood of the more radical separatist minority.

Many critics see Puigdemont’s intransigence of recent years as being driven by self-preservation rather than political conviction – a way of justifying his flight to Belgium.

However, Jordi Grau, a Catalan journalist who has followed Puigdemont closely and co-authored a 2016 biography of him with Andreu Mas, believes the former Catalan president will not be treading softly as the talks intensify.

“I’m absolutely convinced that Puigdemont won’t back away from the demands he has made on the big issues,” Grau said. “The amnesty is not negotiable – either there is one or there’s no deal – but if there is there will have to be something else as well.”