The Catalan president in exile, Carles Puigdemont, has already moved to the Northern Catalonia county of Vallespir - just north of the French-Spanish border, and part of the Catalan-speaking lands in the French state. The Girona politician will campaign for Catalonia's May 12th election from this base, as well as preparing his return from exile. Puigdemont, who will head the Together for Catalonia (Junts) electoral list, has already announced that his intention is to attend the investiture session at the Parliament of Catalonia in Barcelona, where the new legislative chamber resulting from the election will formally vote in the next Catalan president.
For the last seven years, the pro-independence politician has resided in the Belgian town of Waterloo, in the so-called Casa de la República (House of the Republic), while carrying out his work as a Member of the European Parliament, but since Easter he has already made the move to Vallespir, from where he is overseeing the preparation of the campaign and holding meetings with representatives of different sectors. Sources from Junts assert that the will of the party is to carry out a very direct and face-to-face campaign, avoiding virtual events as much as possible. In fact, for the event called this Saturday at Elna, at which the full list of the Junts+ Puigdemont for Catalonia candidacy will be presented, more than a thousand people are already registered.
Puigdemont, who will still have to return in the coming weeks to Brussels and Strasbourg, to take part in sessions of the European Parliament at its two bases, has been focusing his activity on the preparation of the elections for weeks now.
The candidacy he leads
In fact, this Friday morning the Junts executive approved the overall electoral list, about which it is known that, in addition to the already-announced incorporation of the businessperson Anna Navarro, as number two, the former Catalan minister Josep Rull appears as number three, in addition of two new independents, the writer Ennatu Domingo and the historian Agustí Colomines, who occupy the 6th and 9th places respectively. The current speaker of Parliament, Anna Erra, and the leader of the Junts parliamentary group, Albert Batet, return to the candidacy as numbers four and five.
On March 21st, when Puigdemont announced from Elna that he would be the Junts candidate in the parliamentary elections, he made it clear that he intended to return to Catalonia, to be invested as president, if he obtained a sufficient majority. In fact, well before confirming that he would again be a Junts candidate, he had already indicated his intention to be present at the investiture of the new president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, given that when this plenary session is called, the amnesty law will have completed its legislative journey through Spain's Senate and Congress. Once the law is passed, an immediate consequence is that judges will be required to lift European and international arrest warrants, as well as all preventive measures, against those pursued by Spanish justice in relation to independence-process actions. The text of the amnesty legislation makes it clear that, despite the possibility of appeals, these interim measures will not be reactivated.