Police have launched a manhunt in Barcelona for ex-Catalonia leader and fugitive Carles Puigdemont, a campaigner for Catalan independence who made a sensational return to Spain and an equally sensational getaway from a speech with the alleged help of a local police officer.
The events on Thursday took place nearly seven years after Puigdemont fled Spain after a failed independence bid, with an outstanding arrest warrant pending against him.
Puigdemont had previously announced his intention to be in Spain on a day that Catalonia's parliament is due to swear in a new president.
The 61-year-old initially lived in Belgium after bolting from Spain in 2017, but his latest place of residence was not known.
Puigdemont kept his travel plans secret before setting out to the Catalan region in northeastern Spain.
He gave a speech in front of a large crowd of supporters in central Barcelona under the noses of police officers, who made no attempt to detain him.
After his speech, in a cloak-and-dagger moment, Puigdemont went into an adjacent marquee tent, then hurried out of an exit and jumped into a waiting car that sped away, according to an Associated Press photographer who witnessed his departure.
Catalan police arrested one of their own officers on charges of aiding Puigdemont’s getaway, the force’s media office said, but gave no further details.
About three hours after Puigdemont vanished, Catalan police - who operate separately from Spain's police - called off the manhunt without saying why.
Authorities, who may have wanted to avoid confrontation with the crowd of several thousand separatist supporters, had set up a police cordon at the nearby regional parliament where Puigdemont was expected to go afterward.
Once Puigdemont had slipped away, roadside police units checked vehicles across the city of 1.6 million people in an effort to nab him.
Puigdemont faces charges of embezzlement for his part in an attempt to break Catalonia away from the rest of Spain in 2017.
As regional president and separatist party leader, he was a key player in an independence referendum that was outlawed by the central government but went ahead anyway.
Those events triggered a political crisis that roiled Spain for months.
Puigdemont’s appearance in Barcelona, Catalonia’s capital, and his game of cat-and-mouse with police, stole the show on a day when a new government was being sworn in at the regional parliament.
Addressing the crowd, Puigdemont accused Spanish authorities of “a crackdown” on the Catalan separatist movement.
“For the last seven years we have been persecuted because we wanted to hear the voice of the Catalan people,” Puigdemont said.
“They have made being Catalan into something suspicious.
“All people have the right to self-determination.”
The gripping turn of events was likely to bring political recriminations.
The leader of the Popular Party, the main opposition to Spain’s Socialist-led coalition government that has long rebuffed Catalonia’s independence movement, condemned Puigdemont’s return.
Alberto Nunez Feijoo posted on X that Puigdemont’s reappearance was an “unbearable humiliation” that damaged Spain’s reputation.
Puigdemont has dedicated his career to the goal of carving out a new country in northeast Spain - a struggle that is decades old.
His largely uncompromising approach has brought political conflict with other separatist parties as well as with Spain’s central government.
A contentious amnesty bill could potentially clear Puigdemont and hundreds of other supporters of Catalan independence of any wrongdoing in the 2017 ballot.
Spain's central government and the Constitutional Court declared at the time that the referendum was illegal.
But the bill, approved by Spain’s parliament earlier in 2024, is being challenged by the Supreme Court, which argues the pardon does not apply to embezzlement, unlike other crimes that Puigdemont had previously been charged with.
