Catalan ex-president, 4 others in custody in Brussels

Former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont

Brussels prosecutors said yesterday that ousted Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four ex-regional ministers were taken into custody to start the process of their possible extradition to Spain.

The five presented themselves to federal police at around 9 a.m.,

Brussels prosecutor’s office spokesman Gilles Dejemeppe said the five presented themselves to federal police yesterday morning (afternoon, Macau time), that they have not been arrested and that an investigative judge will shortly hear them.

The Belgian judge will have to decide within 24 hours what comes next for the five separatist politicians wanted in Spain on suspicion of rebellion for pushing through a declaration of independence for the northeastern Catalonia in violation of Spain’s Constitution.

Dejemeppe said the judge’s options range from “refusal to execute the European arrest, arresting the people involved, releasing them on conditions or under bail.” He said if they are arrested then they will be sent to jail as the extradition process continues. Dejemeppe said that the entire process from arrest to extradition, could take more than 60 days.

That delay could give Puigdemont time to participate, albeit from afar and in largely a symbolic capacity, in the snap regional election called by Spain’s government for Catalonia on Dec. 21.

A senior official of Puigdemont’s party, the center-right Democratic Party of Catalonia, said yesterday that the party wanted Puigdemont to repeat as its candidate. Spanish government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo has said that any politician can run in the election unless he or she has been convicted of a crime.

Puigdemont and the four ex-ministers fled to Belgium this past week after being removed from power by Spanish authorities as part of an extraordinary crackdown to quash the region’s illegal secession claim.

Political forces in Catalonia are hurriedly jockeying for position to start a campaign that promises to be as bitter as it is decisive to Spain’s worst institutional crisis in nearly four decades.

While pro-union parties try to rally support to win back control of the regional parliament in Barcelona, pro-secession parties are debating whether or not to form one grand coalition for the upcoming ballot.

Spain’s Constitution says the nation is “indivisible” and that all matters of national sovereignty pertain to the country’s parliament.

In all, Spanish prosecutors are investigating 20 regional politicians for rebellion and other crimes that could be punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Another two leaders of pro-secession grassroots groups are also in jail while an investigation continues into suspicion of sedition.

Fueled by questions of cultural identity and economic malaise, secessionist sentiment has skyrocketed to reach roughly half of the 7.5 million residents of Catalonia, a prosperous region that is proud of its Catalan language spoken along with Spanish.

Hundreds of pro-secession Catalans gathered in town squares across the region yesterday to put up posters in support of independence and to demand the release of the jailed separatists.

“People came today because we want to send a message to Europe that even if our president is still in Brussels and all our government now is in Madrid jailed, that the independence movement still didn’t finish and people are still striving to get independence in a peaceful and democratic way,” said 24-year-old protester Adria Ballester in Barcelona. MDT/AP

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SEVERAL THOUSAND people marched in Spain’s Basque Country to protest the Spanish government’s takeover of Catalonia’s affairs to impede the region’s secession and to punish the politicians promoting it. The march held Saturday under steady rain in the city of Bilbao also was organized as a show of support for Catalan separatists who claim the region’s people have the right to self-determination. The Basque region in northern Spain has its own separatist movement, one with a decades-long history of armed conflict and violence. An armed separatist group, ETA, has been blamed for the deaths of more than 800 Spanish law enforcement officers, soldiers and civilians people. The group disarmed earlier this year.