Puigdemont Plans Return to Catalonia on Dec. 12, ABC Reports
Carles Puigdemont plans to return to Catalonia on Dec. 12 after nine years in Belgium, ABC reports. Events would center on the Parliament in Barcelona.
Carles Puigdemont, the former president of the Generalitat (Catalan government), plans to return to Spain on Dec. 12, according to the newspaper ABC. He has lived in Waterloo, Belgium, for nine years, and the main events of his homecoming would take place at the Parlament de Catalunya (Catalan Parliament) in Barcelona, which is chaired by Josep Rull of Junts, Puigdemont’s party.
The date is a Saturday, picked to draw the biggest possible crowd to welcome him. Junts is organizing the reception with the pro-independence groups Assemblea Nacional Catalana and Òmnium.
What is planned at the Parliament
ABC says Puigdemont would like Rull to receive him and then step out onto the small balcony of the chamber. The esplanade below it can hold a large crowd. He could afterward speak in the plenary session, something he has tried and failed to do since the Spanish government applied Article 155 in 2017.
One earlier attempt was a proposal to address the chamber by hologram, which then Parliament president Roger Torrent of ERC refused. The most recent attempt came in August 2024, during the investiture debate of Salvador Illa. Puigdemont turned up in Barcelona by surprise, but fled back to Belgium on learning that the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalonia’s police) would arrest him before he entered the chamber.
The return is possible because of the amnesty law that Pedro Sánchez promoted in exchange for the votes of Junts for his investiture. Puigdemont holds a seat in Parliament but has not exercised it while in Belgium.
Why the date is Dec. 12
Junts first considered an earlier return, before the end of November, as the other two amnestied politicians who lived with him in Belgium, Toni Comín and Lluís Puig, have done. According to ABC, the party concluded that mixing the party with Puigdemont’s institutional role as former president was a problem. It also judged that a return in the middle of the campaign could benefit Sánchez. The general election takes place on Nov. 29, and the following weekend is Constitution Day. His team also wants him to spend his first Christmas in nine years with his family.
What he plans after arriving
After some weeks of rest, ABC reports, Puigdemont wants to visit the cemetery in Amer where his parents are buried, and see friends and relatives. From the first days of January he plans to tour the towns and cities of Catalonia to “listen to the heartbeat of the country.” The aim, according to the paper, is to measure how much support the independence proposal he led still has. His next political steps depend on the result.
Catalan elections are scheduled for 2028.
What this means for Junts
According to ABC, people close to Puigdemont say his intention is to retire and make way for new leaders, such as Míriam Nogueras, the party’s spokesperson in the Congress of Deputies, whom many leaders back as a candidate for Catalan president. He would not lead the opposition, so he would most likely give up his seat and work as a former president from an office that has already been set up in a prime area of Barcelona. He might also stay on as head of Junts or hand that role over as well.
Opinions inside Junts are divided. Some say his presence in Catalonia ends the respect for the figure of a leader in self-exile and call for a successor “to let us think about the future.” The same sources say the way Junts was run from Waterloo has worked badly. His departure could coincide with that of secretary general Jordi Turull, whom many leaders blame for the party’s decline in polls. Junts is concerned about next year’s municipal elections, where it has most of its strength today.
Source: ABC
