“Between president or prisoner, I prefer to be president”

Not one step back nor one step aside. Carles Puigdemont is standing firm in his nomination as President of the Generalitat and sees investiture at a distance as more than feasible, as well as governing from Brussels. “Between being president or prisoner I prefer to be president. I think I can best serve in these conditions, as a prisoner I could not,” he said yesterday in an interview with Catalunya Radio.

Puigdemont hinted that will not return to Catalonia without guarantees that he would not be immediately imprisoned under a Spanish arrest warrant issued against him and the four Catalan ministers in exile. “The only way to continue to govern is with freedom and security,” he said. Without going into detail it seems that Puigdemont has found a means of being invested as President in Brussels and governing from there. While recognising that the Moncloa would block the official designation, he said “Rajoy has no right to subvert the legal mandate.”

Puigdemont will travel to Denmark on Monday to participate in a debate on the political situation in Catalonia, his first time out in Belgium since arriving after the declaration of independence of October 27. The debate is titled “The current political situation in Catalonia and challenges in the European context.”