Puigdemont: “Catalunya is as important as Brexit for EU”

Safe from arrest after Supreme Court judge Pablo Llareda opted not to reactivate the European arrest warrant if Puigdemont left Belgium, where he has been in exile since October, the ex-leader does not want Catalunya to be outside the EU and, in fact, 'assured' it would not be if it became a separate nation.

It would be 'difficult to understand' the EU not wanting Catalunya to remain a member State, Puigdemont said at the conference he was invited to give to the faculty of political sciences in the Danish capital.

“More than half of the current member States were created in the last 100 years thanks to their right to self-determination, and now is the time for the EU to become the Danish example – Catalunya is the Denmark of the south,” he said, referring to how Greenland, which is politically part of Denmark, is outside the EU but mainland Denmark remains a member State.

“We're still Europeans, but we cannot close our eyes to Europe's failures,” Puigdemont continued, criticising the EU's support of Spanish president Mariano Rajoy and his actions over the disputed independence referendum.

Posters, ballot boxes and voting cards were seized by armed police, printing firms raided, websites shut down and mayors threatened with arrest if they allowed public buildings to be used as polling stations on October 1.

On the day, polling stations were raided by riot police drafted in from outside Catalunya, numerous high-ranking regional politicians arrested – many of whom remain in custody – and members of the public were injured.

Many said they were physically attacked and footage of police brutality were aired in the media worldwide, but Spain's foreign minister Alfonso Dastis has called the photos 'fake news' and says all action taken was 'in proportion'.

“The EU treats large and small States differently – I have asked them not to consider the independence movement as a potential crisis, but as an opportunity to show that democracy is more important than borders and that conflicts can be resolved through votes, not violence,” Puigdemont told students at the eminar.

He called the European Commission's support for Rajoy's ordered 'disconcerting', and said 'many citizens' were 'disturbed' by the 'legitimate use of force, violence and threats'.

“We were clearly wrong, because we did not think Europe would permit violence and the violation of fundamental rights on the part of a member State,” Puigdemont admitted.

Spain's Constitution, signed in December 1978 and never updated aside from small amendments – including the gender of the direct heir to the throne when Princess Leonor was born on Hallowe'en 2005 – bans any form of separatism and does not allow for a referendum on independence, meaning the Spanish State considered Catalunya's having called the vote was a criminal offence, going against the Magna Carta, and handled it as such.

But the situation in Catalunya is 'as significant for the EU as Brexit is', in Puigdemont's view.

He pointed out that 38% of the electoral census – every resident in Catalunya irrespective of nationality, and every native of Catalunya anywhere in the world – voted to leave Spain, or over 90% of those who actually did vote.

Most of those who did not vote considered the referendum illegal and did not participate, which skewed the results, although the split between 'leave' and 'remain' was much the same as the result of the Brexit referendum.

Puigdemont says he 'respects' the votes of both those who do, and those who do not, wish to leave Spain, but that the important point is that the issue needs to be discussed – and the State continues to refuse to do so.

Asked if he felt a referendum on Catalunya's independence should extend to the whole of Spain, not just the region, Puigdemont said he had never rejected the idea but that the State had not even suggested it.

“It could be a solution, but they do not want to talk about it,” he said.

“How can it be possible that one can win a regional election with a programme that includes holding an independence referendum, and that these ideas are what make you president, but also land you in jail?” Puigdemont wonders.

“I've tried to discuss it with Rajoy, but he just said, 'I don't want to talk about it'. And in a democracy, there is no right to refuse to discuss.”

He also denied claims he wants to impose the catalán language as the sole mother tongue of an independent Catalunya, instead insisting he wants the new country to be 'open, modern and cosmopolitan', but adds that 'if you try to speak catalán in Spain's Parliament, they won't let you'.

Puigdemont cannot re-enter Spain if he wants to avoid arrest, but with the pro-independence parties having won a majority in the recent Catalunya elections, regional Parliamentary chair Roger Torrent says the only candidate for president is Puigdemont.