Poll shows INCREASE in support for independence as Puigdemont speaks out

And yesterday, as Spain tried to tighten its stranglehold on Catalonia, Puigdemont – sacked by Rajoy – stayed in front, telling journalists in Brussels that he had travelled there to seek “freedom and safety”.

He dismissed speculation that he would seek asylum in Belgium and remained defiant as Spain’s Supreme Court summoned him and members of his ousted cabinet to face interrogation tomorrow and Friday over possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement, in relation to the parliament’s declaration of Catalonia’s independence last week.

Puigdemont told a packed news conference at the Brussels Press Club, next to the European Union’s headquarters, that he would return home “immediately” if a fair judicial process were to be guaranteed in Spain.

“Here we have better guarantees for our rights and we can meet our obligations from here,” adding that he and his team would stay in Brussels and “continue our work despite the limits imposed on us”.

Central government in Madrid claims Puigdemont flouted the constitution by holding an October 1 independence referendum, but yesterday a new poll showed a majority of Catalans still in favour of breaking away from Spain.

The poll of 1500 voters by the Generalitat’s Centre of Opinion Studies showed 48.7 per cent of those asked said Yes to independence, with 43.6 per cent against; 6.5 per cent were don’t knows and 1.3 per cent did not answer. A similar poll conducted in June showed that just 41.1 per cent of Catalans backed independence.

With don’t knows excluded, as is customary in Scottish independence polls, support for Si is now sitting at 52.7 per cent.

Rajoy’s unprecedented use of Article 155 of the Spanish constitution to take control of Catalonia – and the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence by the Catalan parliament – resulted in his calling a regional election there on December 21.

Initially, the pro-independence camp were wary, but Puigdemont said yesterday he would accept the challenge of the early election “with all our strength” and that Catalan nationalists would take part in the vote.

However, it has emerged that even if they prove victorious in the poll, Article 155 could be invoked again to halt independence.

Spain’s Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis said Puigdemont could still stand in the election: “I don’t know what kind of judicial activity will happen between now and December 21.

“If he is not put in jail at that time I think he is not ineligible.”

But Pedro Sanz Alonso, vice president of the Spanish senate – an upper house of parliament not unlike the UK’s House of Lords – said in an interview that even if supporters of independence won the vote, Spain could return to Article 155: “If the law is not complied with, we will require the new government to comply with it and will do the same again.

“We have shown that we are capable of responding to a situation that has to do with cohesion, with the unity of Spain, with coexistence and the rule of law ... we are proud. I think we have done it with dignity.”

Meanwhile, the charges against Puigdemont ignore countless video and eye-witness accounts of the thuggery of Spain’s national police in trying to halt the October 1 referendum.

Instead they accuse him of “an insurrection, a violent uprising” and whipping his supporters “into a frenzy” and “displayed collective resistance to the legitimate authority of the state, using force to try to block the completion of judicial resolutions”.

The charges also accuse Puigdemont and his supporters of co-ordinated “bullying of members of the national police and Guardia Civil and exemplifying “that the accused were not simply counting on the support of the citizenry … but to popular and citizen mobilisation as an intimidatory and violent method for achieving their secessionist goals.”

Puigdemont’s website was closed by Spanish authorities, but the president now has a new one, emphasising his “exiled” status – president.exili.eu/pres_gov/president/ca.