"Today I've informed the speaker of the Catalan Parliament that, provisionally, I won't present my candidacy to be invested as president of Catalonia, and I've asked him to start, as quickly as possible, conversations with the different parliamentary parties to proceed to the nomination of a new candidate to be invested as president of the government in Catalonia. I announce that Junts per Catalunya will propose deputy Jordi Sànchez as its candidate." With these words, Carles Puigdemont, from Brussels, opened a new chapter in the conflict between Catalonia and Spain after a speech of more than 13 minutes with a background of great formal toughness towards the institutions of the Spanish state. To use his own words, Puigdemont is neither giving up, nor retiring. He's building his strength in the European capital through the Council of the Republic, entrusted with safeguarding the 1st October referendum and the proclamation of independence made in the Parliament on the 27th of that month.
The pressures from the state in recent days to drop Sànchez, former Catalan National Assembly president, in Soto del Real prison since 16th October, as a candidate, have completely failed. It will now have to be the Constitutional Court or Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena, or both, who enter the ring to prevent it. Precedent is not on their side - ETA prisoner Juan Carlos Yoldi, in February 1987, was allowed to leave prison to present himself as Batasuna's candidate for lehendakari (president) in the Basque parliament - but despite that there is little doubt that whatever was OK then, they will do whatever possible for it not to be OK now. Similarly, nor will legal judgements in recent months linking the possibility of being a candidate with not being a "fugitive", as they call Puigdemont, won't be helpful. Jordi Sànchez is imprisoned instead, but neither will he be allowed to go to the Parliament, nor be candidate. I don't know how it will be done, but I have little doubt that it will be. The decision has been made, it seems very unlikely to change, and all that's left is to find the legal vehicle to support it.
With Puigdemont's decision announced and awaiting Madrid's moves, two more comments: a team of international lawyers has presented a petition against the Spanish state to the United Nations Human Rights Committee for the violation of human, civil and political rights. The legal initiative opens a new chapter in the internationalisation of the process and will force a recognised, prestigious body to pronounce on the issue. Bad news for the Spanish government.
The second is related to his forceful condemnation of king Felipe VI's actions, which isn't new but is the only person Puigdemont cites by name or rank in the whole speech. "The head of state has placed himself at the head of the go get the Catalans strategy. The indescribable and unforgettable ¡a por ellos! ['go get them'], encourage by a monarchy which has already stopped representing, of its own will, the whole public and which only wants to represent those who think in a certain way". This sentence, just days after the institutional vacuum by Catalan authorities towards the king in his recent visit to the Mobile World Congress, is a large-scale torpedo.
Puigdemont - and, with him, the four ministers in Brussels and former CUP deputy Anna Gabriel - now has the international narrative he wanted with the attributions he's been awarded by the pro-independence parties. Catalan politics always has unexpected outcomes.