Carles Puigdemont is at the center of the target of the protesters who are demonstrating these days in the protests against the amnesty law called by the right and the extreme right throughout Spain and in particular in front of the PSOE headquarters in Madrid. Faced with this climate of tension, the former president’s office has asked the Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, to provide him with an escort from the Mossos d’Esquadra, something that the Department cannot do without the permission of the Ministry of the Interior, which until now Has refused.
But times change and after PSOE and Junts have agreed on the investiture of Pedro Sánchez and the amnesty for those accused of the process, the Minister of the Presidency and one of the main socialist negotiators, Félix Bolaños, has assumed that Puigdemont will be able to have police escort shortly. “No one questions the safety of people,” the minister assured RAC1 in an interview in El Món, adding that “the Ministry of the Interior will process this request and resolve the request.”
The head of Puigdemont’s office, Josep Lluís Alay, sent a letter to the Minister of the Interior on November 6 so that the leader of Junts, who has lived in Belgium for six years, has police protection against “the increase in the level of danger and risk” detected in relation to him in recent weeks. “It is a public and notorious fact,” Alay added.
Sources from the Department of the Interior indicate that the Mossos d’Esquadra “do not have powers to act outside Spanish territory.” “In order to provide the escort service in Belgium there must be authorization from the Ministry of the Interior and until now it has always been rejected,” add the aforementioned sources, who emphasize that this has been the case since Miquel Buch’s time as minister.
Precisely the ex-counselor Buch and the agent of the Mossos d’Esquadra Lluís Escolà were convicted by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia because the policeman, hired as an advisor to the Department of the Interior, had done spy work with the ex-president and is one of the cases that would benefit from the amnesty law if it enters into force.
Bolaños, who has defended the solidity and constitutionality of the amnesty and has predicted that it will achieve what it aims for, “the consolidation of a new stage in Catalonia”, has ruled out that the law will be approved this year and has assumed that It will come into force over the next year, but he has avoided speculating about when Puigdemont will be able to return.
