Puigdemont decided to return to Catalonia on the same day that the Catalan parliament elected Socialist candidate Salvador Illa as the region’s new president.
“I wanted to attend the appointment session, exercise my right to speak and vote,” Puigdemont said in a video shared by X on Saturday. “It was clear from the beginning that the interior ministry had launched a police operation to prevent me from entering the Catalan parliament,” the former regional leader said.
“The attempt to approach parliament was tantamount to a voluntary surrender, there was no intention of surrender whatsoever,” Puigdemont said, accusing the judiciary of “playing politics.”
On Saturday, the Catalan government began the process of forming a new government, with newly elected President Illa officially inaugurated. At the event, he promised “to govern for all, respecting the diversity and pluralism of the Catalan people and avoiding divisive, inflammatory and populist approaches,” the national press reported.
The members of the new government are expected to be announced next week. The new president already said during the campaign that Nuria Parlon, the Socialist mayor of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, would become interior minister, and Josep Luis Trapero, the former head of the Catalan police who was sacked in 2017, would be reinstated.
