Turull says that Puigdemont was in Barcelona until 8 pm on the day of the investiture

Jordi Turull, secretary general of Junts per Catalunya, confirmed this Monday that Carles Puigdemont was in a flat in Barcelona until 8pm on 8 August, the day of Salvador Illa’s investiture, before returning to Belgium, where he lives to avoid the action of the Spanish justice system. The operation Gàbia (cage, in Catalan), with which the police intended to arrest him, was deactivated at 1.30 in the afternoon. In an interview with RAC-1, the number two of the independence party has insisted that there was no agreement with the Catalan police to avoid the arrest and has attacked the political leadership of the Mossos. Puigdemont made a fleeting appearance of barely five minutes in Barcelona at a rally organised by his party and the Mossos did not manage to arrest him despite the large deployment.

“There were people who had things prepared for eventualities. When he leaves the stage [en el paseo de Lluís Companys] goes to a tent and at that time we did not know if there would be a full house [de investidura] “or not,” Turull said on the Catalan radio station to justify his decision not to go to the hemicycle. At that moment, the former Minister of the Presidency explained, the decision was made to go to another flat, to prepare Puigdemont’s possible intervention in the plenary session and to follow the development of the police operation that prevented him from entering the Ciudatella park. At 8 pm, after realizing that it was impossible to be at the session, according to Turull, the former president decided to head back to Belgium after spending two days hiding in flats in the Catalan capital.

Turull has insisted that there was no kind of agreement with the Catalan police to avoid the arrest of Puigdemont, who has been living in self-imposed exile in the Belgian capital since 2017, and has attacked the political leadership of the Mossos d’Esquadra. The image of the Catalan police, he has argued, has not been called into question by what happened and he has criticised the fact that the device set up was as if “they wanted to catch Hannibal Lecter”, the protagonist of the famous film. The silence of the lambs.

He number two Junts has defended Puigdemont’s decision not to put himself at the disposal of the authorities. “You can let yourself be arrested or confronted and stand up to them. And that is what is decided at that moment,” he explained. “Confrontation with people, in this case a certain judge, who laughs at Congress and the spirit of a law, and who has decided not to apply it,” he added.

Turull also recalled that when Puigdemont was arrested in Germany in 2018, the justice system in that country suggested that he could be extradited for embezzlement, but the Supreme Court opposed it. The former minister joked that now this same crime is the workhorse of the judges who are resisting applying the amnesty and that, he recalled, it has been interpreted in three different ways during all the trials related to separatists.

There is one detail that Turull did not want to reveal in the interview with the Catalan radio station: which route Puigdemont used to return to his home in Waterloo, although he did confirm that it was a non-stop journey.

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