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Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan separatist leader who has spent six years as a fugitive from Spanish justice, will run to lead his region again as Spain’s prime minister gives him the chance to return home without arrest.
Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium in the wake of an illegal push for Catalan independence, announced close to the Spanish border in France on Thursday that in a May regional election he would seek “restoration” to a job from which he was ejected in 2017.
The announcement is a stark consequence of a deal Puigdemont struck to grant Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez his parliamentary support in return for an amnesty for separatists who face criminal charges over the failed breakaway attempt.
Sánchez has been attacked for trashing the rule of law to get the votes he needed for another term in office following an inconclusive general election last year.
Puigdemont is accused of orchestrating an amnesty law that has been tailor made to protect himself above and beyond more than hundreds of other potential beneficiaries.
But Puigdemont is likely to campaign for office in Spain from Brussels, where he is a member of the European parliament, because the amnesty is not expected to come into force before the May 12 Catalan election. Conservative lawmakers opposed to the bill establishing the amnesty are delaying the legislation’s passage through the Spanish parliament.
Opinion polls suggest Puigdemont has a slim chance of winning the Catalan parliamentary election as his hardline pro-independence party, Junts per Catalunya, lies in third place.
The Catalan branch of Sánchez’s Socialist party is in the lead, with another separatist group in second place.
But Puigdemont said: “We have to be able to turn the forecasts around and surprise the deluded gravediggers of Catalonia.”
If he won enough votes to become the regional president, he said, “I will leave exile for good to be present in parliament” for the investiture vote.
He continues to face charges of disobedience and embezzlement in Spain that date back to the tumultuous period when he fled in 2017 during the country’s worst political crisis since its return to democracy.
The amnesty law should eliminate those charges, but it may be challenged at Spain’s constitutional court and in European courts.
Its final application to Puigdemont or anyone else depends on the case-by-case decisions of judges.
As Catalonia’s president in 2017, Puigdemont led the push for an independence referendum, later ruled unconstitutional by the courts, which prompted the central government to fire the Catalan administration, dissolve its parliament and take direct control of the region.
Puigdemont stressed he was not renouncing Catalonia’s right to independence.
His candidacy was about “retaking the path that repression blocked and fighting with the same determination to offer citizens the quality of life and the country they deserve”, he said.
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