Puigdemont chose to return on the day that the Catalan parliament was voting on Socialist Salvador Illa becoming the region’s new president.
“I wanted to be present during the investiture session and be able to exercise my right to speak and vote,” Puigdemont said in a video shared on X on Saturday. The former regional leader said that “it had become clear from the outset that the Department of the Interior had set up a police operation” to prevent him from entering the Catalan parliament.
“Trying to access the parliament would have been equivalent to a voluntary surrender, and my intention has never been to surrender,” Puigdemont said, accusing the judicial authorities of “playing politics.”
On Saturday, the Catalan government moved on with the procedures to form a new government as newly elected President Illa officially took office during a ceremony in which he promised to “govern for everyone,” with respect to “the diversity and plurality of the people of Catalonia” and avoiding “divisive, demagogic and populist” approaches, national media reported.
The members of the new government will be announced next week. The new president already said during the election campaign that the socialist mayor of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Núria Parlon, will be the interior minister; and the former director general of the Catalan police force who was removed from his post in 2017, Josep Lluís Trapero, will be reinstated.
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