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Weekly French news magazine L'Obs (formerly Le Nouvel Observateur) has today published an analysis about Catalan president Carles Puigdemont's exile in Brussels, describing it as a "well thought-out strategy".

According to an article by journalist Jean-Baptiste Naudet, the choice to seek refuge in the Belgian capital has a number of political advantages for Puigdemont. "First advantage, the most obvious: he thumbs his nose at Madrid, smoothly escaping, for the moment, arrest in Spain. He gives press conferences, attracting European and international media. There, he denounces the chronic lack of independence in the Spanish justice system," writes Naudet.

The second advantage the article describes is that Puigdemont being imprisoned might lead to "colossal demonstrations" which could turn violent, and the president wants to keep the independence movement peaceful. It says this is what Puigdemont "fears the most", even more than being arrested. For the moment, however, "he continues to lead the Catalan independence movement at a distance, which he couldn't have done from a cell in Madrid."

The article suggests that Puigdemont will use all the tools available in Belgian law, "one of the rare European countries to be able to grant him political asylum". As such Naudet believes that "he can seriously hope to not languish in a Madrid prison before the 21st December [elections]", elections in which "he will be able to stand if he wants to because he will not yet have been sentenced".

For Naudet, the most important advantage is that it's a way for Puigdemont to show that the Catalan independence movement is pro-European, not anti-Europe. He notes that Puigdemont's party is called PDeCAT, the Catalan European Democratic Party and says it must not be forgotten that Puigdemont is "not only the son of a modest baker in a Catalan village, an obscure provincial journalist, a stiff jingoist, but also a polyglot, a traveller with strong democratic and European convictions".

Naudet concludes his report with an open question: what will happen if the pro-independence parties win the election.