Catalan separatist leader says he is back in Belgium

By Joan Faus

BARCELONA (Reuters) -Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont said on Friday he was back in Belgium after dodging arrest during a brief return to Spain and never had the intention of surrendering himself.

"I'm in Waterloo after extremely difficult days," he wrote on X. Puigdemont has lived in self-imposed exile since leading a failed bid for Catalonia's secession in 2017.

Puigdemont briefly returned to Spain after seven years of self-imposed exile, defying an arrest warrant to address a rally of supporters on Thursday, then escaped in scenes worthy of a crime caper film, angering opposition politicians and the judiciary.

Eduard Sallent, commissioner of Catalan regional police Mossos d'Esquadra said his officers had waited until after the rally to avoid a public confrontation.

But on ending his speech, Puigdemont went backstage and slipped behind a tent where he put on a baseball cap and jumped into a car parked nearby, the police chief said.

Officers raced towards the vehicle but a group of around 50 people, all wearing straw hats, "made a wall" to block them, the chief said. Police were two metres (6-1/2 feet) away when the car sped off, he said.

"It was an operation that failed in its objective of arresting Puigdemont, which can be defined as a mistake, but we weren't made to look like fools. The Mossos did what they were asked to do," he said.

Sallent earlier cast doubt on accounts that Puigdemont had left Spain and said the hunt for the Catalan leader continued.

"I do not rule out that this man is still in Barcelona," Sallent said. "I have no objective evidence that Mr. Puigdemont is in Belgium, rather I think that is what they want me to believe and we do not work with assumptions, much less with statements from interested parties," he said.

RECRIMINATIONS FLY

The Supreme Court judge leading the investigation against Puigdemont called on the Mossos and the national government to explain the spectacular failure to detain him.

Although the Spanish parliament has pardoned those involved in the failed 2017 secession bid, the Supreme Court ruled it did not apply to Puigdemont.

He faces charges of embezzlement along with two others because the cost of the independence referendum - ruled illegal by Spanish courts - was charged to the regional treasury.

Puigdemont says the vote was legitimate and that therefore the charges are invalid.

As recriminations about the failure to capture him flew, Spain faced the prospect of further political instability.

His escape has angered conservative opponents already upset about Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's amnesty for Catalan separatists in exchange for support for his minority government.

Junts party General Secretary Jordi Turull said the party was reconsidering its support for the government because the Supreme Court had ruled the amnesty law did not apply to Puigdemont and two others.

He said Junts' backing would have "a very narrow path forward or no path at all" unless Madrid strongly pressed for application of the amnesty law to all.

Sanchez and his government have remained notably silent, and declined a request to respond to the Junts threat and the opposition criticism.

The opposition People's Party (PP) on Friday said the interior and defence ministers should be fired over Puigdemont's escape.

(Reporting by Joan Faus in Barcelona, Belen Carreño and Ana Cantero in Madrid and Farah Salhi in Waterloo; Writing by David Latona and Charlie Devereux; Editing by Aislinn Laing, Andrei Khalip, Kevin Liffey, Andrew Heavens and Sandra Maler)