Catalan president Carles Puigdemont has said that he is prepared to stand as a candidate in the Catalan elections called for 21st December. He made the statement in an interview with French-language Belgian public broadcaster RTBF to be broadcast at 8pm this evening. What's more, the president said that he could run his campaign from Brussels.
The president insists that his wish is for these elections to take place in the most normal manner possible, but that "it's not with a government in prison that these elections are going to be neutral, independent and normal". The journalists then ask him if he will stand as a candidate. He replies that he is prepared to do so and that he sees no problem campaigning from Belgium, "because we're in a globalised world".
Puigdemont argues that he leads the legitimate government of Catalonia and that what he wants to do is explain "what is really happening in Spain".
The president of Catalonia explains that he decided to leave Spain to avoid violence which "has never been an option for us", but that he is prepared to hand himself over to "authentic justice", for him the Belgian courts, not the Spanish justice system "which cannot guarantee anything".