MADRID: Fugitive Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont on Saturday said he had had no intention of handing himself in to authorities during a brief visit to Spain earlier this week.

Puigdemont, who fled abroad after leading a failed 2017 independence bid for Catalonia, defied an arrest warrant to return to Spain on Thursday. He delivered a speech to thousands gathered outside the Catalan regional parliament in Barcelona before slipping away.

“I never had any intention of handing myself in to a judicial authority that is neither competent to persecute us... nor to render justice, but is motivated by political objectives,” Puigdemont said in a video published on social media site X. On Friday, Puigdemont had revealed he was back in Belgium, where he has lived in exile for the last seven years.

The 61-year-old had been hoping to enter the Catalan regional parliament building to take part in a vote to pick a new leader for the wealthy northeastern region. Instead, he disappeared into the crowd as the Catalan regional police force launched a manhunt.

Speaking from his home in Waterloo, close to the Belgian capital, Puigde­mont said he had been hoping to “enter parliament to take part in the session and exercise my right to speak and to vote

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2024