Extradition fight lingers for Catalan

BARCELONA, Spain — Catalonia’s former regional President Carles Puigdemont has vowed to keep fighting extradition back to Spain if the European Union’s parliament strips him of his immunity as a lawmaker this week.

Puigdemont and two fellow Catalan separatists won seats in the European Parliament in 2019, two years after fleeing Spain because they had led a failed secession attempt for Catalonia that Spain considered illegal.

Today, Puigdemont, along with cohorts Toni Comin and Clara Ponsati, face a vote by the European Parliament on whether to lift their immunity as lawmakers, a move that has been recommended by the parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee.

“We contemplate all scenarios, obviously even that we will lose our immunity, which is the most likely,” Puigdemont said Saturday evening from his residence in Waterloo, Belgium.

Lifting their immunity would allow Spain to once again pursue their extradition to stand trial, like fellow separatist leaders who remained in Spain and were found guilty of sedition and the misuse of public funds in the 2017 breakaway bid.

So far, courts in Belgium, Germany and Britain have refused to send Puigdemont and his colleagues back on grounds of sedition, as has been requested by Spain. Outstanding arrest warrants in Spain mean they would be immediately detained if they attempted to return home.

Puigdemont said that besides resisting in the national courts, the three will “take our case to the Court of Justice of the European Union.”

Puigdemont appealed to fellow lawmakers on the grounds that his cause is shared by other minorities in larger European nations.

The EU parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee did not see any threat of political persecution when it analyzed the case last month.