Puigdemont visits Denmark as judge refuses to demand arrest
● Judge says former Catalan president is ‘trying to provoke arrest’
fugitive ex-president of Spain’s Catalonia region left his self-exile in Belgium and visited Denmark unimpeded after a Spanish judge refused to ask Danish authorities to arrest him.
Supreme Court Judge Pablo Llarena rejected a petition from Spain’s top prosecutor to issue a European arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont, saying the former Catalan leader was trying to “provoke his arrest overseas” with his planned trip to Copenhagen.
Mr Puigdemont’s trip, which included attending a university debate and meeting Danish MPS, came nearly three months after he was removed from office and fled to Belgium. A warrant for his arrest remains open in Spain.
Spanish authorities are investigating him and other Catalan officials for possible rebellion and sedition charges related to regional parliament’s 27 October declaration of independence.
Shortly after Mr Puigdemont arrived in Denmark, Catalonia’s parliamentary speaker proposed him as candidate to form a new government, despite his status as a fugitive.
Judge Llarena said he suspected Mr Puigdemont planned the trip to Denmark with its attendant risk of arrest so he could blame Spain for missing an upcoming vote in the regional Parliament to elect a new leader.
“Facing the legal impossibility to be elected without being present at the Parliament, provoking his arrest overseas seeks to equip him with a justification that his absence is not a free decision as a fugitive, but the consequence of a situation that has been imposed on him,” Judge Llarena wrote in his decision rejecting the prosecutor’s request to re-activate a European arrest warrant for Mr Puigdemont.
The Catalan parliament has not set a date for the investithe ture vote, but the deadline is 31 January.
Spanish courts initially sought Mr Puigdemont’s extradition from Belgium but cancelled that petition amid concerns that Belgium might send him back but restrict the crimes with which he could be charged.
The push for independence by the Catalan government, while Mr Puigdemont was regional president, triggered Spain’s most serious political crisis in decades. Spain ousted Mr Puigdemont’s Cabinet, dising solved the regional parliament and called a December regional election as part of special powers invoked following the independence declaration.
He and his 13 former Cabinet members face possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement, which carry jail sentences of up to 30 years under Spanish law.
Despite Mr Puigdemont’s legal situation, Catalan parliamentary speaker Roger Torrent said yesterday that the former president was the only candidate with enough back- following last month’s election to attempt to form a new government.
Mr Puigdemont faces immediate arrest if he returns to Spain and, if he remains abroad, central authorities in Madrid said they would block any attempt he might make to be Catalonia’s president.
Spanish prime minister maria no Rajoy has even threatened to maintain special constitutional powers to keep direct control of the region.
Mr Torrent said he asked Mr Rajoy for a meeting to talk about the “abnormal situation” in Catalonia. But a government official close to Mr Rajoy said that the central government had no intention of discussing judicial affairs with the Catalan speaker.
Spanish foreign minister Alfonso Dastis had said the issue of how to proceed with Mr Puigdemont was for judges, and not the government, to decide. “Mr Puigdemont is subject to a process in Spain Outside, for the moment, his movements are free within the European Union, but we’ll see,” Mr Dastis said in Brussels.