Spain's Public Prosecutor's Office will activate all mechanisms to arrest Carles Puigdemont if the president travels from Brussels to Denmark this Monday. This has been announced by the Spanish prosecution service in a press release this Sunday. Puigdemont is planning to travel to the Danish capital where he has been invited to take part in a debate organized by the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen.
In the press communiqué published this Sunday, the Spanish Public Prosecutor's Office indicates that it is "awaiting official confirmation" from police services of the "movements of the person under investigation Carles Puigdemont" in attending the event in the Danish capital. When confirmation is received, according to the press statement, the activation of the arrest warrant will be requested.
"If confirmation is received" of Puigdemont's movement, says the communiqué, "it is the intention of the Public Prosecutor's Office to act immediately requesting that the Supreme Court judge proceeds to activate the European Warrant for arrest of the person under investigation in order to request the Danish judicial authorities to detain him".
The day after the debate, on Tuesday, Carles Puigdemont plans to respond to the invitation of a group of MPs from the Folketing, the Danish Parliament, to meet with them behind closed doors. The MPs belong to the commissions of Foreign and European Affairs and the committees for Greenland and the Faroe Islands, who want to hear in first person about the goals of the Catalan sovereignists and meet the probable candidate for the Catalan presidency.
The announcement of Puigdemont's visit has gone down like a lead balloon with the Spanish authorities, especially the diplomats in Denmark itself. The Spanish embassy in Denmark "does not like the fact that Danes might be able listen to Puigdemont", according to a headline in the country's leading conservative newspaper Berlingske.
The embassy has already expressed the Rajoy government's discontent with the situation. Javier Dago, number two at the embassy, told the Danish newspaper that to him the university's invitation seems "surprising". "Puigdemont is not the most appropriate person to give an opinion about the current situation in Catalonia", said Dago.