In self-exile in Belgium and wanted in Spain, former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont on Thursday abandoned his bid to return as regional leader in an attempt to unblock the region’s political crisis.
“I will not put myself forward as candidate to be appointed regional president,” Puigdemont said solemnly from Belgium in a video posted on social media, standing in front of Catalan and EU flags.
The 55-year-old called for a new candidate to be chosen “as soon as possible” from Catalonia’s separatist bloc, which won elections in December last year in a region deeply divided over independence.
This could pave the way for Catalonia to get a fully functioning government and regain its autonomy after Madrid took full control of the region over its secession bid in October last year.
Madrid welcomed Puigdemont’s move, with a Spanish government source saying that Catalonia needed “to have a regional president as soon as possible.”
Vowing to continue drawing the global community’s attention to Catalonia’s cause, as separatists accuse Madrid of repression in its crackdown, Puigdemont said his lawyers had taken the case to the UN Human Rights Committee.
He also put forward Jordi Sanchez, president of the Catalan National Assembly, a hugely influential pro-independence citizens’ group, as his preferred choice to lead Catalonia forward.
However, that will likely be difficult, as Sanchez has been in prison for more than four months as he is investigated for sedition, one of four separatists in jail over their role in the independence drive.
Sanchez stands accused of encouraging a major protest in September last year as Spanish police raided the Catalan administration’s economic offices in the run-up to a banned independence referendum on Oct. 1.
Marred by police violence, Catalan authorities said turnout in the vote was about 43 percent, of which 90 percent backed independence, even if Madrid dismissed the referendum.
Weeks later, separatist lawmakers declared independence on Oct. 27.
The Spanish government moved in immediately, stripping Catalonia of its prized autonomy, dismissing its separatist government, dissolving its parliament and calling snap elections on Dec. 21.
Puigdemont left for Belgium shortly after the declaration and was charged with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds.
However, he still ran in the December polls from abroad, leading the separatist bloc to victory as they retained their absolute majority in parliament.
After the regional election, Puigdemont remained the separatists’ favored candidate to lead Catalonia again. He argued that he could govern the region remotely, with the help of super-fast new technologies.
However, the Spanish Constitutional Court made his appointment conditional on his physical presence in the regional capital, Barcelona, with permission from a judge.
Faced with these obstacles, the Catalan parliament’s speaker — also a separatist — postponed a key assembly vote to reappoint Puigdemont as president in January.
Since then, separatist parties have been locked in tense talks on how to move forward.
Suggestions had started to emerge that Puigdemont could be given a “symbolic” role in Belgium while another candidate would be picked to lead Catalonia from Barcelona.
On Thursday, Catalonia’s majority separatist parliament approved a motion defending him as the “legitimate” candidate for the regional presidency — a move widely seen as a way to encourage him to step aside without losing face.
The motion also stated that the separatists were “favorable to the constitution of Catalonia as an independent state.”
In his video, Puigdemont said he was renouncing his bid to lead Catalonia again so that the region could get a new government and shake off direct rule from Madrid.
“We won’t surrender, we won’t give up,” Puigdemont said. “I know that the path we have ahead is long and fraught with difficulties.”
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of