Star Metro - Puigdemont said to leave Spain after evading arrest

Puigdemont, who fled abroad after leading a failed 2017 independence bid for Catalonia, defied an arrest warrant to return to Spain on Thursday.

He delivered a speech to thousands gathered at the Catalan regional parliament in Barcelona before vanishing.

The 61-year-old had been expected to try to enter the parliament building for a vote to pick a new leader for the wealthy northeastern region, but instead disappeared into the crowd.

"He is on his way back to Waterloo," the secretary general of Puigdemont's hardline separatist JxCAT party, Josep Turull, told Catalan radio, referring to the Belgian city where he has spent most of the past seven years.

Puigdemont's lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, told Catalan radio earlier that his client had fled abroad again and would speak on Friday or Saturday.

But Eduard Sallent, head of Catalonia's regional police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, said he did not "rule out" that Puigdemont was still in Barcelona.

"Until we have proof that he is outside the jurisdiction of the Mossos d'Esquadra, we will continue to look for him," he told a news conference.

Catalonia's regional police launched a manhunt for Puigdemont and said it had arrested two officers, including one who owned the car used by Puigdemont to leave the scene. They were released after a few hours.

The force denied there had been any collusion and insisted officers had planned to arrest him "at the most opportune time so as not to generate public disorder".

- 'Unfolded very quickly' -

Supreme Court Judge Pablo Llarena, who issued the arrest warrant for Puigdemont, on Friday demanded the names of the officers who approved the operation to arrest Puigdemont, as well as "those who have been entrusted with its execution or operational deployment," according to a court document.

Sallent said his force had everything ready to arrest Puigdemont near the regional parliament but he did not go there as had been expected.

"The events unfolded very quickly," he said, adding Puigdemont was "surrounded by a crowd of people and authorities" with the "aim of obstructing the action of the police".

Puigdemont led the regional government in 2017, when it carried out an independence referendum despite a court ban.

A short-lived declaration of independence sparked Spain's worst political crisis since the country returned to democracy following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

Puigdemont fled Spain shortly after the failed independence bid to avoid prosecution and has since lived in Belgium and more recently France.

While Spain's parliament passed an amnesty law in May for those involved in the secession bid, the Supreme Court ruled on July 1 that the measure would not fully apply to Puigdemont.

- 'Unspeakable' -

Puigdemont's latest escape has brought political recriminations,

The head of Spain's main opposition Popular Party, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, said the interior and defence ministers should be dismissed for the "police negligence" that allowed Puigdemont to evade arrest.

"What happened yesterday is unspeakable and cannot go unpunished," he wrote on social network X.

But Justice Minister Felix Bolanos said the operation to arrest Puigdemont "was the responsibility of the Mossos", whose job it was to enforce court orders in Catalonia.

"In Spain the law must be respected and court orders must be complied with," the minister said.

Catalonia's parliament on Thursday elected Salvador Illa of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialists as Catalonia's first head not from the pro-independence movement since 2010.

O.Gauthier--SMC