BARCELONA: Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont used straw hats and subterfuge to evade an arrest warrant in Barcelona and may still be hiding out in Spain, police said on Friday as they faced a storm of criticism for failing to detain him.

Puigdemont returned to Spain after seven years of self-imposed exile, defied the warrant to address a rally of supporters on Thursday, then escaped in scenes worthy of a crime caper film, angering opposition politicians and the judiciary.

Eduard Sallent, commissioner of the Catalan regional police, said his officers had waited until after the rally to avoid a confrontation.

But on ending his speech, Puigdemont went backstage and slipped behind a tent where he put on a baseball cap and jumped into a car parked nearby, the police chief said. Officers raced towards the vehicle, but a group of around 50 people, all wearing straw hats, “made a wall” to block them, the chief said. Police were two metres away when the car raced away, he said.

“It was an operation that failed in its objective of arresting Puigdemont, which can be defined as a mistake, but we weren’t made to look like fools. The Mossos did what they were asked to do,” he said, referring to the force’s official name, the Mossos d’Esquadra.

Puigdemont’s party said on Friday he was now headed back to Belgium, where he has lived in self-imposed exile since leading a failed bid for Catalonia’s secession in 2017. Junts party General Secretary Jordi Turull told a radio network that he did not know whether Puigdemont had already reached his base in Waterloo.

Puigdemont’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, said Puigdemont had left Spain and would make a public statement “in the coming days”.

But Sallent cast doubt on those accounts and said the hunt for the Catalan leader continued. “I do not rule out that this man is still in Barcelona,” Sallent said. “I have no objective evid­ence that Mr Puigd­emont is in Belgium, rather I think that is what they want me to believe and we do not work with assumptions, much less with statements from interested parties,” he added.

Journalists who knoc­ked on the door of Puigdemont’s home in Waterloo on Friday were told he was not expected there.

‘Recriminations fly’

Puigdemont faces a charge of embezzlement for his role in a failed independence referendum ruled illegal by Spanish courts. He says the vote was legitimate and that therefore the charges are invalid.

On Friday, the Supreme Court judge leading the investigation against Puigdemont called on the Mossos and the national government to explain the spectacular failure to detain him. As recriminations flew, Spain faced the prospect of further political instability.

Puigdemont’s escape has angered conservative opponents already upset about Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s amnesty for separatists in exchange for support for his minority government.

Turull said on Friday Junts was reconsidering its support for the government because the Supreme Court had ruled the amnesty law did not apply to Puigdemont and two others. He said Junts’ backing would have “a very narrow path forward or no path at all” unless Madrid strongly pressed for application of the amnesty law to all.

Sanchez and his government have remained notably silent, and declined a request to respond to the Junts threat and the opposition criticism. The opposition Peoples Party said on Friday the interior and defence ministers should be fired over Puigdemont’s escape.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2024