Roads blocked after former leader arrested
DEMONSTRATORS ANGERED by the detention of former leader Carles Puigdemont have blocked roads across Catalonia and roads in central Barcelona.
Transportation authorities in the north-eastern Spanish region said a main motorway remained blocked in Figueres, near the border with France, last night.
Demonstrators also stopped traffic in another highway leading to the city of Lleida, and a national road between Tarragona and Valencia. Protesters also caused disruptions early yesterday on several roads in central Barcelona, the regional capital. Catalonia has been marred by largely peaceful protests for more than six months since a bid for secession from Spain began in earnest.
The Catalan parliament’s declaration of independence in late October following an ad-hoc referendum banned by the Spanish government received no international recognition and provoked a takeover of the regional government by Spanish authorities.
Mr Puigdemont was ousted and fled to Belgium. Last week, a Spanish Supreme Court judge charged the 55-year-old politician with rebellion and misuse of public funds.
Spain then issued arrest warrants for six of the seven Catalan separatists who have fled the country.
Mr Puigdemont was detained on Sunday, shortly after crossing the border into Germany from Denmark. Further decisions on Mr Puigdemont’s immediate future appear unlikely before Easter.
Germany’s criminal code – unlike Belgium’s, where Spain had earlier sought Mr Puigdemont’s extradition – includes an offence that appears to be comparable to rebellion, the main accusation against the Catalan politician.
It calls for prison sentences for anyone who “undertakes, by force or through threat of force” to undermine the republic’s existence or change its constitutional order.
In a move celebrated by his supporters, the United Nations Human Rights Committee announced that it has registered a complaint by Mr Puigdemont alleging that Spain has violated his political rights.
Meanwhile, a former Catalan Minister facing extradition to Spain remains “defiant and resolute” as she prepares to hand herself in to the authorities in Scotland, according to her lawyer.
Professor Clara Ponsati, the exCatalan Education Minister, is set to begin a “robust” legal fight resisting Spanish attempts to have her returned to the country to face charges of rebellion, which she refutes.
Scottish-based Prof Ponsati is due to attend a police station in Edinburgh voluntarily today after she was made the subject of a European arrest warrant last week.
The academic is then due to appear from custody at Edinburgh Sheriff Court later that same day. Prof Ponsati returned to Scotland earlier in March, having been in Belgium since fleeing Spain.
Her lawyer Aamer Anwar said: “I understand that Clara Ponsati faces charges of violent rebellion and misappropriation of public funds, which my client utterly refutes.”