Former Catalan leader preaches independence from self-exile

Almost every evening for the last two weeks, the seaside calm of the French town of Argelès-sur-Mer, which is just a few miles from the Spanish border, has been broken. Outside the Jean Carrère sports hall food trucks open up, music starts pumping out of speakers and hundreds of mainly elderly people disembark from coaches. Chatting in the Catalan language, many of them bring with them flags bearing the red and yellow stripes and white star of their region’s independence emblem.

The reason they are here is the man whose face is blown up on the side of the coaches that have brought them and whose name is lit up on the facade of the sports hall.

Carles Puigdemont, the former president of Catalonia who has been in self-exile for 6½ years, has been campaigning here as a candidate in advance of his region’s election. As he risks arrest if he enters Spain, supporters of his pro-independence Together for Catalonia (JxCat) party have been crossing the border to France each day to see him, hoping that Sunday’s election will lead to him making a dramatic return to Spain and becoming their region’s leader once again.

“He’s the right person to lead a new independence process,” says José María Costa, who has just arrived. His wife, Dolors, agrees.

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“When he was president before he did a great job,” she says. “He mobilised all of us who felt Catalan and who wanted something better for our country.”

There is a festive atmosphere among his supporters, who travel here for each campaign event from different parts of Catalonia. Today, most of them have come from the highland province of Lleida, and they mill around inside a marquee eating hot dogs or playing table football before entering the building.

Among them is pensioner Carmen Bori.

“If we’re going to gain independence, he has to be the one to do it. I don’t like the other politicians,” she says. “Other people lost hope, but not me. I’ve always supported him.”

Puigdemont fled Spain just days after his government led a failed independence bid in 2017 following a referendum that the Spanish judiciary deemed illegal and which was disrupted by police violence. As several of his colleagues were arrested and imprisoned, Puigdemont set up base in Waterloo and successfully evaded extradition while becoming an MEP.

He established himself as an uncompromising voice of Catalan separatism on the international stage, touring Europe with the message that Spain’s judiciary was an instrument of repression and its democracy deeply flawed.

For his supporters, this has made him their charismatic president-in-exile, the only genuine separatist among Catalonia’s main political players, with a proven record of defying the Spanish state. But for his many unionist enemies, he is a cowardly traitor, willing to break up Spain but not prepared to go to prison for it.

For the essayist and novelist Javier Cercas, he is “a creator of chaos” and “an activist with just one obsession in his life ... to totally screw Spain”.

The leader of the conservative Popular Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, meanwhile, called him a “messianic politician whose only objective is to gaze at his own navel”.

The 61-year-old Puigdemont eventually takes the stage to a rapturous reception, his greying mop-top haircut offset by a sober blue suit.

“For some time now I am supposed to have been under arrest in a Spanish prison, it’s what they wanted – not necessarily Puigdemont, but the president of Catalonia,” he said. “And here I am today with you, a few weeks before returning without having had to apologise to the Spanish justice system.”

Outside in the lobby, such dramatic rhetoric is echoed in the form of merchandise: mini replica ballot boxes harking back to the 2017 referendum are later given to attendees as they leave.

Yet Puigdemont also addresses more humdrum issues, an acknowledgment that the independence debate has been pushed into the background by Catalonia’s severe drought, a housing crisis and poor education results in the region.

This is not the first time Puigdemont has run as a candidate from abroad – he also did so in 2017 and 2021. However, this time he does so as the kingmaker of Spanish politics and with his return to Spain on the horizon. In November, the votes of JxCat’s seven MPs in the Spanish Congress allowed Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists to form a new coalition government.

In exchange, Sánchez agreed to a long-standing demand of the independence movement: an amnesty law lifting all pending legal action against Catalan nationalists for separatist activity, including that of 2017. The law – which is fiercely opposed by the unionist right – is due to complete its passage through parliament in the coming weeks. Puigdemont, who faces charges of misuse of public funds and disobedience and is being investigated for terrorism-related crimes, would be its highest-profile beneficiary. The amnesty could be in place around the time that the Catalan parliament convenes to form a new government.

Puigdemont has said he plans to attend, regardless of whether or not the amnesty is already in effect – meaning he might still face arrest.

“Knowing the Spanish judiciary, I don’t know if they will be able to resist the impulse to capture a picture they have been desperately seeking,” he said in a press conference before the rally about his possible detention.

[ EU pulls brakes on adding Catalan, Basque and Galician as official languages ]

Puigdemont has carried out his campaign in a bubble. Not only is he abroad, but he has shunned most interaction with the Spanish media (and declined requests for an interview with The Irish Times). He has refused to debate with the other candidates, even though his main nationalist rival, current Catalan president Pere Aragonès of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), offered to travel to France for a face-off.

This decision not to engage with his adversaries or potentially hostile media, according to the editor of La Vanguardia newspaper Jordi Juan, allows Puigdemont to maintain a “calculated ambiguity”.

“One day he makes a speech about how to improve [Catalan] self-government and the next he says he wants to finish what he started in 2017,” Juan wrote.

That approach appears to be paying off. Although the Socialist Party is expected to win the election, many polls show that JxCat has overtaken its bitter rival ERC. While a post-electoral impasse is a possibility, a strong performance by Puigdemont could feasibly see him return to the presidency, with the amnesty ensuring criminal charges against him are dropped. If he does not become regional president, he has said he will withdraw from politics.

Oscar and Montse Ardiaca, a couple who at the age of 50 are at least two decades younger than most of the other supporters attending this event, believe Puigdemont’s arrival back in Spain would be a dramatic event, reminiscent of the return from exile of other Catalan presidents such as Francesc Macià in the 1930s, or Josep Tarradellas in the 1970s.

“He hasn’t come here for a holiday,” says Montse. “He’s going to return.”

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