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Next week, the trial will start in Spain's Supreme Court of Catalan pro-independence leaders. It will also be a busy week for their colleagues who went into exile. President Carles Puigdemont and former ministers Clara Ponsatí and Lluís Puig are set to go to up to five different countries between them: Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway and Belgium.

Back to Berlin

It was in the German capital last year that Puigdemont became a free citizen of Europe again. Shortly before the first anniversary of his arrest in the country, Puigdemont will be back in Berlin, where he will give a press conference at the Catalan government's delegation on 12th February. The saga last year ended with a Schleswig-Holstein court saying he could only be extradited to face charges of misuse of public funds, at which point the Spanish judge dropped the arrest warrant.

The next day, at 8pm, he will give a speech at Groningen University in the Netherlands entitled "An independent Catalonia?". He will then be interviewed by professor Tim Huiskes, a specialist in international relations and European and international law.

In Brussels on Friday, he will then talk about his book La crisi catalana, una oportunitat per a Europa (literally, "The Catalan crisis, an opportunity for Europe") at the city's book fair.

Ministers on tour

Whilst Puigdemont is in Berlin, Ponsatí will be in Bergen, Norway, to take part in a debate on the situation following the 2017 independence referendum, organised by the Catalan National Assembly (ANC).

The following day, Puig will join the morning's protest organised by the ANC in Cologne, Germany. In the afternoon, he will take part in a discussion on the Council for the Republic. The next day, he'll take part in an identical discussion in Luxembourg.