Puigdemont vague on political return

Catalan leader talks independence

MADRID/COPENHAGEN, Jan 23, (Agencies): Spanish authorities are monitoring borders to make sure that fugitive Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont does not sneak back into Spain to take up the presidency of the regional parliament again, a senior minister said on Tuesday.

Puigdemont, speaking in Copenhagen, said his return from self-exile to Barcelona would be good for Spanish democracy, but he stopped short of saying if and when he would go home.

Puigdemont has said he can rule from Belgium, where he fled to in October to avoid arrest for his part in organising an illegal referendum on a split by Catalonia from Spain and a subsequent unilateral declaration of independence.

The Madrid government, however, says no one can be named or rule remotely. Puigdemont told a news conference in the Danish capital that a huge majority of the Catalan parliament supported him taking up the role of regional president once more following an election in December.

“My return to Barcelona will not only be good news for Catalan people who support our cause but also for Spanish people and Spanish democracy,” he said.

But he did not say exactly when he planned to return to Spain when questioned on the matter.

In Madrid, Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said he was worried that the 55-year old — who faces arrest the minute he steps back in Spain — could now try to discreetly return to the parliament in Barcelona for a vote on his candidacy.

“We’re making sure this cannot happen, at the borders and within the borders, everywhere,” Zoido told Antena 3 TV. “We’ll make sure he cannot get in, even (hidden) in the boot of a car,” he said.

Candidacy

Catalan lawmakers are set to vote on Puigdemont’s candidacy by Jan 31.

In related news, Puigdemont met Danish MPs in Copenhagen to discuss the crisis in his home region and Denmark’s handling of its semi-autonomous territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Puigdemont, charged in Spain with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds, arrived in the Scandinavian country on Monday, in his first foreign visit since leaving Spain to live in voluntary exile in Brussels on Oct 30.

He was invited to Denmark by Magni Arge, an MP for the Faroese separatist party Tjodveld (Republicans) and who served as an observer for the banned Catalan independence referendum in October that saw a brutal police crackdown.

Tuesday’s talks began at 11:30 am (1030 GMT) behind closed doors in an office in the Danish parliament, an AFP journalist at the scene said.

Those invited included representatives of parties on parliament’s standing committee on foreign affairs.

However, the parties that make up the centre-right government coalition, headed by Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of the Liberal Party, declined to attend, as well as those from the country’s two biggest parties, the Social Democrats and the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party.

Some said they were unable to attend because of prior engagements, while others said they wanted to refrain from meddling in Spain’s internal affairs.

Former Danish foreign minister Holger K. Nielsen, of the Socialist People’s Party, said he would participate “but not because I agree” with Puigdemont.

Greenland MP and former prime minister Aleqa Hammond was also on the list of participants.