After a crazy appearance

Puigdemont makes spectacular escape according to lawyer

Separatist Puigdemont incited thousands of Catalans.

(Bild: AP/Emilio Morenatti)

He was there for a moment and a few moments later he was gone again! According to his lawyer, Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, who is wanted on a warrant, has fled abroad again after his lightning visit to Barcelona. He will "never turn himself in".

"Puigdemont is outside the Spanish state", Catalan radio station RAC1 quoted Gonzalo Boye as saying. The lawyer left open whether Puigdemont had returned to Belgium, where he had spent the majority of his almost seven-year exile.

Puigdemont will address the public in the near future, the lawyer said. The Spanish police have been searching for him in vain since Thursday. Lluís Llach, the Catalan singer-songwriter and leader of the separatist civic movement ANC, wrote on the platform X that Puigdemont had asked him to say that he was "healthy, safe and, above all, free".

Separatist Puigdemont incited thousands of Catalans.

(Bild: AP/Emilio Morenatti)

Flash appearance in Barcelona
But no word on where the 61-year-old is and what he is trying to achieve by fleeing again. Boye had been rather terse about the excitement the previous evening. He presented his client's return to Barcelona on Thursday morning from almost seven years in exile, his short campaign speech in front of thousands of supporters and his subsequent disappearance under the eyes of the press and police as a normal working day.

A photographer reports on the spectacle surrounding Puigdemont: 

"He did his political work and went home when it was done, like everyone does," he told journalists. Where is this home? He was not at liberty to say. In any case, Puigdemont would "never turn himself in".

Not the first spectacular escape
In 2017, Puigdemont fled the country hidden in a car after an illegal independence referendum and the subsequent secession of Catalonia from Spain failed.

Although there is now an amnesty for separatists, there is still an arrest warrant for Puigdemont, who is accused by investigating judge Pablo Llarena of having personally enriched himself in 2017. This offense is exempt from the amnesty. Llarena is now demanding an explanation from the police as to how Puigdemont was able to escape.