Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, doesn't count out "anything", not one of the possibilities which have been suggested to carry out his investiture as president. This morning, after meeting a group of MPs in the Danish Parliament, he even asked the Spanish government for the deputies in exile to be allowed to return to Spain "safely", "without threats" to be able to exercise their rights as deputies.
"I'm working to be able to be there", he said in a speech to the press in the corridors of the Christiansborg Palace after emphasising that the best signal for the "restoration of democracy" would be him being allowed to return normally from exile in Brussels and for the imprisoned politicians to be able to leave free.
The president has today renounced the request to delegate his vote in the Parliament in the investiture debate which has stoked speculations about him returning. "I've already said that I'm not discounting anything", he repeated when asked if he's contemplating the possibility of returning.
Indeed, he insisted that his aim is to be able to be present at the debate, which he invited everyone to help make possible, "starting with the Spanish authorities".
The president thanked the Danish MPs who received him and took up the opportunity to debate freely on the conflict between Catalonia and Spain, unlike has happened in the Parliaments in Spain. "If I were to enter the Catalan Parliament I would be arrested," he said.
Puigdemont spoke in English, Spanish and Catalan and accepted three questions. In his responses, he advised Spanish authorities that they don't have to spend their time speculating and reinforcing the borders and joked about the decision by Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena to not reactivate the European warrant for his arrest. The judge had argued that reactivating the warrant was precisely what Puigdemont wanted. "It's crazy. It shows the weakness of that position," he said.
The president, who arrived in Copenhagen yesterday to take part in a debate at the city's university, will return to Brussels this evening. Tomorrow he will meet there with the new speaker of the Catalan Parliament, Roger Torrent.
Ex-ministers and MPs
The meeting with Danish MPs, behind closed doors, lasted one hour. A dozen MPs from five different parties were present, including two former ministers and a former premier of Greenland. Some of them have first-hand knowledge of the Catalan debate having been observers during the 1st October referendum. None of them were government ministers and, in fact, the largest parties tried to avoid the event.
Puigdemont repeated a large proportion of the arguments he gave the day before in the university and reiterated his disposition to achieving a negotiation solution to the issue.
New referendum
An MP for the Red-Green Alliance, Pelle Dragsted, explained that Puigdemont had made it clear that "independence is not the only solution". "He's ready to debate and discuss other solutions to the conflict and a possible path could be a referendum in which the people of Catalonia could choose between different models," he said.
Also present at the meeting were Holger K. Nielsen (Socialist People's Party), former Foreign minister; Uffe Elbæk (green party The Alternative), former Culture minister; former premier of Greenland Aleqa Hammond (Siumut); Magni Arge (pro-Faroe Islands independence party Republic); Claus Kvist Hansen (Danish People's Party) and Nikolaj Villumsen (Red-Green Alliance).