Fugitive Catalan separatist leader says would not surrender

Fugitive Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont on Saturday said he had had no intention of handing himself to authorities during a brief visit to Spain earlier this week.

Puigdemont, who fled abroad after leading a failed 2017 independence bid for Catalonia, defied an arrest warrant to return to Spain on Thursday.

He delivered a speech to thousands gathered outside the Catalan regional parliament in Barcelona before slipping away.

"I never had any intention of handing myself in to a judicial authority that is neither competent to persecute us... nor to render justice, but is motivated by political objectives," Puigdemont said in a video published on social media site X.

On Friday, Puigdemont had revealed he was back in Belgium, where he has lived in exile for the last seven years.

The 61-year-old had been hoping to enter the Catalan regional parliament building to take part in a vote to pick a new leader for the wealthy northeastern region.

Instead, he disappeared into the crowd as the Catalan regional police force launched a manhunt.

Speaking from his home in Waterloo, close to the Belgian capital, Puigdemont said he had been hoping to "enter parliament to take part in the session and exercise my right to speak and to vote".

But a heavy police presence at the park near parliament where he gave a speech had convinced him to abandon those plans to avoid "certain arrest".

He said that he had thus decided to flee "in a context of repression and total encirclement" so that he could return home.

The leader of the hardline Catalan nationalist JxCAT party said he had been aware of the "risks" and "huge costs of failure" had he tried to enter the parliament building.

He accused the Spanish state of not acting democratically and the supreme court of ignoring laws approved by parliament.

Puigdemont led the regional government in 2017 when it carried out an independence referendum despite a court ban.

A short-lived declaration of independence sparked Spain's worst political crisis since the country returned to democracy following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

Puigdemont fled Spain shortly after the failed independence bid to avoid prosecution and has since lived in Belgium and more recently France.

While Spain's parliament passed an amnesty law in May for those involved in the secession bid, the supreme court ruled on July 1 that the measure would not fully apply to Puigdemont.

Three police officers have been arrested for allegedly helping Puigdemont flee while Catalonia's regional police has denied colluding with him.