The Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, yesterday asked the Minister of the same branch, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, to urgently authorize the official escort service – run by the Mossos d’Esquadra – for Carles Puigdemont in Belgium, requested again by the former president himself. Elena formalized the request to the Ministry of the Interior hours after the head of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, assured that the Government will process the request this time because “no one questions the safety of the people, no matter how many ideological differences there may be.” However, in the Interior they do not take the authorization for granted. And for now, they will ask that the State Attorney’s Office get involved.
It was the head of Puigdemont’s office, Josep Lluís Alay, who late on Monday demanded that the Generalitat place an escort in Belgium for the former president because “for some weeks” – in the middle of the negotiations between PSOE and Junts for the inauguration of Pedro Sánchez – have detected that the risk of suffering an attack has increased.
A request for personal protection service would have two possible channels, according to police sources. If the escort were for Catalonia, in that case the authorization would be exclusive to the Generalitat and Mossos d’Esquadra, which as a comprehensive police force have jurisdiction in the matter. This is not the case for now. In the second scenario; escort in a third country, it would be Belgium that would have to authorize it after the Interior carries out the request. And that procedure is the one that has never obtained the approval of the department headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
Last September, the Barcelona Court sentenced former Interior Minister Miquel Buch to four and a half years in prison and 20 years of disqualification for hiring a Mossos sergeant as an advisor in his department in 2018 to continue escorting Puigdemont after his flight.
Despite this, yesterday the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, assured in Rac1 that the Ministry of the Interior will process the former president’s request. Some statements that caused surprise in the team that Marlaska leads, since the request had not even reached the ministry.
The Generalitat understood in Bolaños’ words a change of position in Moncloa and this was reflected in the letter addressed to the Interior: “Following some statements by Minister Bolaños […] we understand that, this time, the Government Spanish will process the protection request. This represents a relevant change with respect to the position maintained in recent years.” In that sense, Elena requested “as a matter of urgency” the bodyguards in Belgium and Foreign Affairs for the procedures “for the transfer of the weapons of the agents who must provide the service.”
The letter arrived at Interior a couple of hours after its publication on networks. Ministerial sources explain that, for the moment, the request will neither be evaluated nor submitted nor processed. The first thing will be to ask the State Attorney’s Office to rule through a report on the matter. It so happens that the legal services already spoke out in 2018.
With that report in hand, Interior denied the request for two reasons: that Carles Puigdemont is not a State authority and that he has a search and arrest warrant in Spain. This, as argued, would force the police officer accompanying him to detain him rather than escort him.
