Spanish Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena has demanded the names of the Catalan police officers who approved the operation to carry out the arrest warrant he had issued to detain Carles Puigdemont on Thursday – but who spectacularly failed to do so. ALSO READ: Catalan police fail to detain Puigdemont, despite him giving public speech in Barcelona.
Llarena also wants the names of those ‘entrusted with its execution or operational deployment’, according to a court document.
The Supreme Court judge leading the investigation against the former Catalan president and fugitive Puigdemont called on the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, and the national government to explain the failure to detain him.
Although the Spanish Congress has pardoned those involved in the failed 2017 secession bid with a controversial amnesty law, the Supreme Court has so far ruled that it does not apply to Puigdemont. He still faces charges of embezzlement along with two others following the independence referendum, ruled illegal by the Spanish courts. ALSO READ: Controversial Catalan amnesty law gets final approval in Spanish Congress.
Puigdemont was back in Belgium late on Thursday night or in the early hours of Friday morning, after he evaded arrest in Spain with a dramatic dash into a getaway car following a public appearance in Barcelona on the day of the investiture debate in the Catalan Parliament. ALSO READ: A new era in Catalonia, as socialist Salvador Illa is elected president.
In an astonishing turn of events, he disappeared shortly after speaking to a crowd of some 5,000 supporters in central Barcelona, under the eyes of many journalists and police officers who had intended to arrest him after the speech.
The heads of the Mossos d’Esquadra, which had deployed 500 officers in preparation for the fugitive’s pre-announced return, tried to defend their actions in a press conference on Friday, and said that an investigation had been launched to look into what went wrong.
Joan Ignasi Elena, the acting head of Catalonia’s interior department, which oversees the Mossos, defended the force and criticised Puigdemont.
‘We didn’t expect such inappropriate behaviour from someone who has been the first authority of (Catalonia),’ Elena told journalists during a two and half hours long press conference.
Mossos chief Eduard Sallent (main image) said the large crowd and the presence of local dignitaries, including the president of the Catalan Parliament, escorting Puigdemont as he arrived to give his speech, made it difficult to detain him at that moment.
Police expected he would then march to the Catalan Parliament — as had been publicly announced by Puigdemont himself, as well as an announcer talking to the crowd on loudspeakers. Police hoped to have a better opportunity to execute the arrest warrant there.
Instead, the Catalan leader rushed off the stage and into an adjacent tent, put on a baseball cap, and then quickly got into a white Honda car that had been waiting for him. Spanish media has reported that the car was parked in a place reserved for the disabled and that a folded-up wheelchair was visible on the front seat. The car reportedly belonged to a Mossos agent who has since been detained. A woman was seen at the wheel of the vehicle as it sped away.
Police chased the car but then lost track of it, Sallent explained. Officers raced towards the vehicle but a group of around 50 people, all wearing straw hats, ‘made a wall’ to block them, the chief said. Police were two metres away when the car sped off, he said.
‘It was an operation that failed in its objective of arresting Puigdemont, which can be defined as a mistake, but we weren’t made to look like fools. The Mossos did what they were asked to do,’ he said.
‘The events unfolded very quickly,’ said Sallent, adding Puigdemont was ‘surrounded by a crowd of people and authorities’ with the ‘aim of obstructing the action of the police’.
Two other police officers were later arrested for their involvement in the escape. One of them has since been released.
Puigdemont had announced on Wednesday that he planned to return to Spain. But Jordi Turull, a fellow Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) member, told Catalan Radio that Puigdemont had in fact been in Barcelona since Tuesday.
Turull was in the car with Puigdemont when he fled, police said. Turull later said that he parted company with Puigdemont once they reached southern France.
Puigdemont has since posted a long message and also a video on X/Twitter from his residence in Belgium.
‘Today [Friday] I am in Waterloo after an extremely difficult few days,’ he wrote in Catalan, referring to the Belgian town where he has spent most of the past seven years.
Puigdemont’s first escape from Spain in 2017 became legendary among his followers, and a huge source of embarrassment for Spanish law enforcement.
Earlier this year, Puigdemont denied that he had hidden in a car trunk to avoid detection while slipping across the border in 2017 after the referendum. The subsequent legal crackdown landed several of his cohorts in prison until Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government pardoned them.
Click here for all our reports related to Catalan independence.
🗣️ El comissari en cap dels @mossos, Eduard Sallent, explica que el “dispositiu feia setmanes que s’estava treballant amb els diferents escenaris d’investidura tenint present l’ordre de detenció a Puigdemont” pic.twitter.com/VugRiKM8pr
— Interior (@interiorcat) August 9, 2024
El Comissari en Cap compareix amb els màxims comandaments del Cos per explicar el dispositiu policial d’ahir per garantir el desenvolupament del Ple d’investidura i la detenció de Carles Puigdemont d’acord amb l’ordre judicial vigent pic.twitter.com/LYePM2lL2w
— Mossos (@mossos) August 9, 2024
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