German police yesterday said that they had arrested former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein on a European arrest warrant issued by Spain.
In a statement, police said Puigdemont was detained near a section of the A7 highway which cuts through the state from the city of Flensburg near the Danish border.
Police did not say exactly where he was being held.
“Schleswig-Holstein police are at this point in time unable to provide more details,” it said, other than that Puigdemont was taken into custody at 11:19am.
A Spanish Supreme Court judge on Friday charged 13 Catalan separatist politicians with rebellion for their attempts to make the region independent of Spain, dealing a heavy blow to the secessionist movement.
The judge reactivated international arrest warrants for the six Catalan officials who are fugitives, including Puigdemont.
Puigdemont’s party spokeswoman, Anna Grabalosa, also separately confirmed that he was detained on arrival in Germany from Denmark.
“It happened as he crossed the Danish-German border. He was treated well and all his lawyers are there. That is all I can say,” she said.
Puigdemont’s lawyer, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, said his client had been on his way back to Belgium, where he has been living in self-imposed exile along with four of his former ministers.
Puigdemont had traveled to Finland on Thursday for talks with lawmakers, but slipped out of the country on Saturday before Finnish police could detain him on a European arrest warrant.
In Barcelona on Saturday, the Catalan parliament suspended its debates after regional presidential candidate Jordi Turull, who had been due to seek a second-round vote in the parliament, was placed in custody over the region’s breakaway bid following the judge’s reactivation of the arrest warrants.
Separatist parties won regional elections in Catalonia in December last year called by Madrid after they attempted to secede and retained their absolute majority in parliament, but they have still not been able to form a government and face growing legal pressures that have seen many moderate their tone.
“The presidential candidate of the Generalitat [Catalan executive] is in prison with other lawmakers of this chamber,” Catalan parliament Speaker Roger Torrent said at the start of Saturday’s session, which had been aimed at electing a new regional leader.
“It’s clear that under these circumstances the session cannot take place,” he said.
It is the third time that the parliament has been unable to nominate a new president, after Puigdemont and another pro-independence leader, Jordi Sanchez who is currently in jail, were forced to withdraw their candidacies.
If a new president is not elected by May 22, fresh elections will be triggered.
And as long has it does not have a government, Catalonia will remain under direct rule from Madrid, imposed after the independence declaration in October last year.
Additional reporting by AFP
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