SPAIN’s increasingly ludicrous attempts to halt the movements of deposed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and several of his sacked ministers yesterday put the country’s prosecutors on a collision course with authorities in Switzerland.
Puigdemont and former minister Meritxell Serret are travelling to Geneva from their Brussels exile to attend the Human Rights Film Festival, along with former Catalan MP Anna Gabriel.
She fled to the Swiss capital last month to avoid giving evidence to a Spanish court investigating politicians’ roles in the October independence referendum.
The fugitive ex-ministers face charges of rebellion and sedition and would be arrested should they return to Spain.
Julián Sánchez Melgar, the acting attorney general, urged the Spanish government to take action to liaise with Swiss authorities, through Interpol, to arrest them in Switzerland.
However, the move backfired when the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) rejected the plea and said Puigdemont was allowed to travel “freely”.
In a statement, the FDFA said: “This is a private visit on the invitation of the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH). Mr Puigdemont is scheduled to make several public appearances during his stay in Switzerland.
“In this connection, Switzerland reiterates that the question of Catalonia is an internal matter for Spain and should be handled within the framework of the Spanish constitutional order. The Swiss and Spanish authorities are in contact.
“Mr Puigdemont’s stay in Switzerland is governed by Swiss law and the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons. As a Spanish citizen, Mr Puigdemont is entitled to travel freely within the Schengen area. He is also at liberty to give political speeches with due respect for the Swiss legal system.
“The authorities may take measures in the event of any disruptions of public order.”
Melgar’s office is now talking to Spain’s interior ministry to ascertain if the fugitives’ passports can be restricted to stop them moving between countries.
He is furious that Spanish justice knows where Puigdemont and the others are but has not acted against them: “We have never had a fugitive who we knew exactly where he was and who announced the movements that he was going to have. When a person escaped it is because we did not know where he was.”
Meanwhile, Puigdemont has attacked King Felipe VI and criticised the influence he says the Franco regime still has on Spanish politics.
He told Swiss public broadcaster Radio Télévision Suisse: “The person who named [Felipe’s] father as king of Spain was Franco.
“It’s not a secret, it’s public. There’s still some inheritance. I don’t know if the world knows that Franco’s mausoleum still exists in Spain, paid for by public money and visited by thousands of people every year.”
He said he had a good relationship with Felipe when he was prince of Girona and he was the city’s mayor but added: “I don’t know what happened so that in October the king would appear so violently on television.”
This was a reference to a TV address in October in which Felipe accused the Catalan authorities of attempting to break “the unity of Spain”, warning that their independence push could risk the country’s social and economic stability.
Puigdemont said Felipe had lost authority over the Catalan people, because the Constitution said he had to play the role of arbitrator. “The king has lost Catalonia. I don’t know why he’s done it.”
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