For many Spaniards, he remains public enemy number one, but he now holds the key to the next government. The former president of the Generalitat de Catalunya (the government of the autonomous community), Carles Puigdemont returned to the political limelight with the July 23 parliamentary elections.

His party, Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia), won seven of the 350 seats in Parliament. That is enough to block a possible left-wing government, if Junts decides to add its votes to those of the People's Party (PP, right) and Vox (far right) against the reappointment of the prime minister, the Socialist Pedro Sánchez (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, PSOE), who wishes to keep the current coalition of the left in power.

Worse still, since the votes of Spaniards abroad were counted on July 28 – giving the PP one more seat at the expense of the PSOE – even Junts' abstention would no longer be enough to give Sánchez power. The next Spanish government will therefore depend on the approval of the man who orchestrated the Catalan secession attempt of October 2017. While the new Parliament is due to take office on August 17, the subsequent negotiations to form a majority promise to be lengthy. And there is no guarantee that they will succeed.

Contempt and embezzlement

Puigdemont is still being prosecuted for organizing the banned referendum of October 1, 207, and is facing two charges: contempt, for ignoring judicial warnings, and aggravated embezzlement, an offense punishable by 12 years in prison, for allegedly using public funds to organize the referendum. Having settled in Belgium after fleeing the day following the unilateral declaration of independence on October 27, 2017, and then becoming an MEP in 2019, the 60-something has so far managed to evade Spanish justice.

His situation, however, is more delicate than ever. He has lost several appeals at the Court of Justice of the European Union to restore his immunity as an MEP, which his peers in Brussels lifted in March 2021. He has announced his intention to make a final appeal, the decision on which will be handed down in eight months' time at the latest. By then, there is little doubt that Spanish Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena will have reactivated the European arrest warrant issued against him, which Belgium has refused to enforce.

For the time being, the MEP is wandering the Belgian capital. His cause has been forgotten. But from his plush 550-square-meter house in Waterloo, south of the city, the former mayor of Girona, under the banner of the right-wing nationalist Democratic Convergence of Catalonia, has continued to dictate the uncompromising position of Junts, the separatist party he founded in 2020.

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