The Catalan president in exile and candidate of Junts+ Puigdemont for Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, has announced that he will leave active politics if he is not made president in the investiture debate after the Catalan election on May 12th. In an interview with radio station RAC1, Puigdemont made it clear that he will return to Catalonia even if he is not president: "I will return even if I do not win the elections and I am not invested as president", affirmed the president in exile, stressing that with the amnesty law "closes the stage of exile, a stage of great repression and intensity".
"I must return to Parliament whatever the conditions are, the electoral results must be respected", he added, to make it clear that he will return whatever the results on election night. However, Puigdemont also stressed that leaving active politics will not mean he moves away from the political world: "I will carry out politics all my life, I did so even when I was a teenager. But if you mean active politics, I can't carry out active politics, if I don't have the responsibility of the presidency".
On the other hand, and still regarding his return to Catalonia, Puigdemont asserted that even if he can do so legally, he will not return to Catalonia in an electoral context, that is to say, before the elections. As he has said, he does not want to put his return at the service of the party. "The return that we have been working on for so many years cannot be an act in the service of an electoral strategy, nor a provocation, nor hooliganism", he concluded.
The entire one-hour interview with Carles Puigdemont (in Catalan), conducted by Jordi Basté on RAC1.
His return will be relaxed
Still with regard to his return, the president in exile explained to presenter Jordi Basté that once the amnesty law is in force, all the interim measures - such as arrest warrants - will have to be lifted and no entry and search orders or entry into prison will be possible. "The law says, and we fought a lot for this, that initiatives to suspend its entry into force will not prevent the lifting of the interim measures", therefore, if the Supreme Court decided to submit a preliminary question to the European Court of Justice, which he believes is very likely, it would not affect his ability to return. In fact, he clarified that it was possible that, without the amnesty law coming into effect yet, the European Arrest Warrants could be lifted before the elections; even if that happened, Puigdemont replied, his return would not happen ahead of time.
The Supreme Court's summons of Puigdemont in the Tsunami case
Asked about the Supreme Court's request for him to testify voluntarily between June 17th and 21st for alleged crimes of terrorism in the so-called Democratic Tsunami case, the president in exile indicated ironically that "justice does not lose any opportunity to be faithful to the tradition that 'when there is an electoral process we must interfere', we were just waiting for them", he joked. And in response to the judge's statement that the testimonies could be made via video conference, the candidate expressed surprise, because, as he recalled, since 2017 Spanish justice had refused his requests to make court declarations by remote means. Having said that, Puigdemont is clear that since the amnesty will already be in force, everything will remain "as waste paper, I'm sure". Carles Puigdemont says, with regard to the Democratic Tsunami probe that "what concerns me about the case is from the point of view of the rule of law, that a member state of the EU does these things, it worries me as a democrat, but on a personal level, no more than everything that has pursued me so far," he pointed out calmly.
Proposal for a 3-way debate
With regard to the proposal by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, for a three-way debate with himself, Carles Puigdemont and Salvador Illa, being held outside Catalonia to enable the Junts candidate to take part, Puigdemont had comments on the sticking point in the plan - the Socialists' rejection of the idea of holding debates outside Catalonia - which did not convince the exiled president: "The PSOE came to negotiate with me in Brussels, can't the Catalan Socialists really come to Perpinyà, which is Catalonia, for a three-way debate?", he reproached them. In the same vein, over the possibility that, in the absence of Illa, a two-person debate between Puigdemont and Aragonès would still be possible, he stressed that "We don't need a face-to-face between pro-independence parties, but to work side by side", he said. Face-to-face, he said, is a logic that must be dedicated to others.