L’AMPOLLA, Spain — Carles Puigdemont has evaded police in Spain and is on his way back to Belgium, a high-ranking official in his party said on Friday.
He “is going back to Waterloo,” according to Jordi Turull, the secretary-general of Puigdemont’s party Junts, speaking on local radio RAC1 on Friday morning. Turull said that Puigdemont spent last night in France and will now make his way back to Waterloo, outside Brussels, where he has been in exile since 2017.
Turull added that Puigdemont arrived in Spain on Tuesday, and the two of them had dinner that first night.
Puigdemont’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, also spoke to RAC1 on Friday and said that the former regional president had left Spain, but he did not give further details on his whereabouts.
Spain’s interior ministry had not replied to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Puigdemont, the former Catalan president and figurehead of the region’s independence movement, appeared in public in Barcelona on Thursday, gave a speech and then vanished. He returned on the day that the Catalan parliament was voting on Socialist Salvador Illa becoming regional president.
In the subsequent hours, Catalan police launched a manhunt and locked down Barcelona for several hours. They were unable to apprehend Puigdemont, who has had an arrest warrant in his name since fleeing the country seven years ago.
The police are facing tough questions, with two officers arrested Thursday accused of helping Puigdemont with his escape. The Catalan police, known as Mossos d’Esquadra, had not replied to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Spain’s main police union, Jupol, said the politician’s escape was “a scandal” that represented “an unacceptable dereliction of duty” on the part of the police. The right-leaning Unified Police Union demanded that the country’s National Police Force and Civil Guard take charge and that the regional officers be excluded from the investigation.
The Catalan interior minister and the police chief will give a press conference later Friday morning.
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