Conflicts: Puigdemont wants to continue fighting for the independence of Catalonia from Belgium

Stand: 19:21 | Reading time: 2 minutes

D The Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont, resigned from Madrid, returned on Saturday in exile in Belgium. Germany. From Belgium, the politician wants to internationalize the conflict over the secession of Catalonia from Spain: Puigdemont announced that he would go "to the last corner of our continent" to represent the "just cause of the Catalan people."

About 300 The partisans received Puigdemont in front of his villa in Waterloo outside Brussels. In a speech, he called for the release of detained independence supporters of the Spanish Guard: "There is no political, legal or democratic reason to keep them in prison for another minute more ". Nine separatist politicians are still detained in Spain. Six others are in exile.

The Puigdemont villa in Waterloo was decorated with Catalan flags and the "Welcome President" banner. He now wants to make this "House of the Republic" the starting point of a Europe-wide struggle for the independence of Catalonia. The return to Belgium is "not the end" of his trip, said Puigdemont.

Puigdemont met in Belgium with representatives of the Catalan government and former members of his cabinet, who also live in exile. The Puigdemont villa is not far from the place where the French Emperor Napoleon was defeated by a European coalition at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

The 55-year-old announced his return to Belgium Wednesday in Berlin. Puigdemont is in the sights of the Spanish judiciary as the organizer of the plebiscite on the independence of Catalonia from last October. Despite the police violence, thousands of Catalans voted in the referendum. Ninety percent accepted the proclamation of a Republic of Catalonia at the end of the month. The central Spanish government then declared Puigdemont and his deposed government.

While Spanish justice tried to arrest him, Puigdemont fled to Brussels in exile. In March he was arrested while he was crossing Schleswig-Holstein under an international arrest warrant. Since then, the complex judicial procedure has been for his extradition to Spain.

The legal hanging ended only a few days ago when the Madrid Supreme Court withdrew the warrant of international arrest against the Catalan extradition and gave up the extradition. He justified the decision of the German judicial system to declare extradition admissible only in case of embezzlement of public funds and not because of a referendum-related rebellion.

Puigdemont would therefore only have a lower charge in his own country can be brought to justice. The reproach of rebellion is 25 years in prison in Spain.