Carles Puigdemont, former Catalan leader in exile, in Rivesaltes (Pyrénées-Orientales), March 1, 2024. JEAN-CHRISTOPHE MILHET / AFP
About thirty kilometers from the Spanish border, the village of Elne, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, has entered the mythical history of the Catalan independence movement as the town having served as a rear base to hide the plastic ballot boxes used during the banned referendum of October 2017. It is undoubtedly no coincidence that, Thursday March 21, it was there that the former president of the government of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont announced his candidacy for the regional elections of May 12. “After six and a half years of defending the presidency in exile, I am not going to reject the possibility of restoring this unjustly impeached presidency,” he declared, to loud applause.
Pending the final vote on the amnesty law by the Parliament of Madrid, intended to allow his return from Belgium, where he fled Spanish justice after the secession attempt of October 2017, Mr. Puigdemont offered a crowd bath in “Northern Catalonia” – as the nationalists call French Catalonia –, in front of more than a thousand people, failing to be able to enter Spain, where he remains the subject of an arrest warrant.
In a packed municipal hall, the mayor of Elne, Nicolas Garcia (French Communist Party), welcomed him with a brief speech in Catalan, praising the “victims of repression and the exiles” prosecuted for having defended “democracy and the right of a people to decide its future.
“Discouragement and loss of confidence”
In front of a huge poster with his image, accompanied by three words, “Carles Puigdemont president”, without the logo of his party, Junts (Together, nationalist right), nor any other slogan, the former Catalan leader allowed his people to to go back in time, to forget his hasty flight shortly after declaring the independence of the Catalan Republic, and proposing to “successfully complete the independence process”.
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For this, he defended the same tools as in 2017: “a unitary independence candidacy”, which goes “beyond (his) party”, and, if he is elected, a “self-determination referendum”. For those who could not discern the novelty, he insisted: “a referendum, not a consultation”. Its great rival, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), which governs the region in a minority, rejected the alliance offer. “After abandoning the executive and voting against the budget, proposing a single list amid criticism amounts to repeating the mistakes of the past,” commented the ruling party.
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