Catalonia’s Lost Leader / The Times

El Clasico should have been played on Saturday. The match between Barcelona and Real Madrid, one of the world’s great sporting rivalries, should have kicked off at noon before 99,000 fans in Barcelona’s giant Nou Camp stadium, but the Spanish authorities postponed it for fear of civil unrest — or so they say. Spain’s second city, economic powerhouse and tourist magnet has been rocked by huge, often violent protests since the Supreme Court gave nine Catalan separatist leaders sentences of up to 13 years in prison for sedition a fortnight ago.

Carles Puigdemont, the former president of Catalonia, suggests another reason. The Barcelona club is a symbol of Catalan pride while Real Madrid is “the team of the regime” — the Spanish state. He believes the authorities postponed the game to prevent a vast global television audience seeing fans waving Catalan flags and banners proclaiming “free the political prisoners”. “Their fear is that people attending the match would create a choreography — peaceful but very, very evident at the moment that millions of people are watching on television,” he says. “Why should they help us internationalise the conflict by putting el Clasico in the middle of the struggle?”

It is two years since Puigdemont dramatically fled Spain to avoid arrest on charges of rebellion and sedition. As president he had organised a referendum on Catalan independence that the Spanish government and constitutional court had declared illegal, and proclaimed Catalonia’s independence after claiming victory. Madrid responded by imposing direct rule on Spain’s wealthiest region, dismissing its government and charging its leaders.

This Beatle-haired fugitive from justice wages his battle for Catalan independence from a handsome rented villa — the “Casa de la Republica Catalana” — in an affluent residential neighbourhood of Waterloo, just south of Brussels. He has six Catalan staff who address him as Mr President, an elaborate security system and bodyguards. “I’ve received a lot of death threats — hundreds,” he says, adding that tracking devices have twice been discovered on his cars.

From his suburban headquarters he presides over a 14-member Council for the Republic, a sort of government-in-exile, but mostly he seeks to advance his cause by exposing the iniquities of what he regards as a deeply authoritarian Spanish state.

The draconian sentences handed down to his colleagues last week were “confirmation that there’s no justice. It was a revenge decision,” Puigdemont says in imperfect English. Calling a referendum was not a crime. “The intention of the Spanish justice was not only to condemn, but to express a clear message to the future generations — don’t try it again. It explains why we are deciding to be independent, why we are claiming more democracy, because in front of us there’s only repression.”

He also blames the police, not the protesters, for the ensuing violence — the burning of cars and rubbish bins, the hurling of rocks and petrol bombs (600 people were injured, nearly half of them police officers). “I condemn violence. Violence is not our way. There was huge violence by the Spanish police and that has provoked in an irresponsible way a reaction from some small part of the demonstrators,” he says. That was “understandable” because the sentences were so harsh, but violence “can create an alibi for the Spanish police”.

Spain’s government still seems to regard Puigdemont as Public Enemy No 1. It has issued three European arrest warrants against him. Judges in Belgium dismissed the first on procedural grounds in 2017. Madrid withdrew the second after Puigdemont was arrested in Germany last year and a German court decided he could be extradited only to face the relatively minor charge of misusing public funds. It issued a third after the Spanish Supreme Court discarded the charge of rebellion against last week’s defendants, leaving only the charge of sedition.

“Sedition? It’s a crime from the 19th century,” says Puigdemont with a chuckle. He spent several hours arguing his case before Belgian judges. Days later, the Spanish police raided his lawyer’s office in Madrid, ostensibly over money-laundering allegations, but in Puigdemont’s view “to make his life more difficult at a key moment”.

The Spanish government has also prevented him taking the European parliament seat that he won in May’s elections after campaigning by videolink from Waterloo; being an MEP would give him immunity from prosecution.

The government says he must first swear allegiance to the Spanish constitution in Madrid. “If I go to Madrid I will be arrested,” says Puigdemont, whose offer to have a lawyer make the oath for him was rejected. He has since taken his case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ), which has agreed to hear it. “I was elected to represent all European citizens, not just the Spanish,” he says.

He is unsurprised that the European Union has not intervened to resolve the conflict, as Pep Guardiola, Manchester City’s Catalan manager, has suggested. Member states stick together, Puigdemont says, and some — including Britain — face their own secessionist movements.

Yet he is dismayed by what he sees as the EU’s failure to protect the rights of Catalan citizens to protest and his own as a democratically elected politician. “I think it’s shameful for Europe because I was elected by more than one million voters. What kind of example is the EU showing to the rest of the world?”

Inevitably our conversation turns to the pros and cons of referendums. Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum and his independence referendum in Catalonia have led to years of strife, resolving nothing. Of those who voted in the Catalan ballot 92 per cent supported independence, but only 43 per cent of the electorate voted because unionists mostly stayed away. Catalans remain deeply divided on the issue.

Puigdemont says it is the underlying issues that are divisive, not the referendums. He believes that David Cameron was right to ask the people about Britain’s continued EU membership, although he regrets the decision to leave. He argues that in Catalonia’s case a referendum was the only democratic way to proceed because successive Spanish governments had refused to discuss the region’s demand for much greater autonomy.

His offer of talks in the immediate aftermath of the referendum was refused. Last Monday Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, visited riot-torn Barcelona, but refused to speak to Quim Torra, Puigdemont’s successor as Catalan president. “That was a huge mistake from the Spanish side. It’s incredible to visit Barcelona and not to meet the main constitutional authority of Catalonia.”

I ask whether he thinks pro-Remain Scotland should follow Catalonia’s example and stage its own referendum on independence if, as seems possible, Britain leaves the EU and Boris Johnson denies it a fresh ballot. It is unthinkable that a democratic country like Britain would deny the Scots another referendum, he replies. But if it did? “I wouldn’t want to recommend or not recommend. I want to be very careful because I want to respect the way Scots decide to find their freedom because Scotland has the right to be independent.”

Puigdemont lives in lonely limbo, supported by donations, waiting for the ECJ’s ruling and the result of his extradition case. If forced to return to Spain, he says: “I’ll be condemned to more than 13 years so I will probably spend the rest of my life in jail.”

His Romanian wife, Marcela, and his two daughters, Magali, 12, and Maria, 9, still live in Girona, his beloved home city, 600 miles away. He talks to them daily via his laptop and even helps with his daughters’ homework. His parents are too old and frail to visit him, so “probably I’ll never see them alive again”. He lives alone on the villa’s top floor with two cats rescued from a refuge, seldom goes out except on business, and relaxes only by cooking or playing music — in his youth he played guitar in a band. The spacious living room in which we talk is decorated with Catalan artefacts, a painting of Amer, the village of his birth, and, poignantly, a jar of pebbles from Girona.

“It’s hard from a personal point of view,” he says, “but it allows me the possibility to work, to express myself, to do politics, to defend our cause. So in that sense I’m comfortable working from exile because it’s the only option I had.” He remains a member of the Catalan parliament and holds a conference call with his team at 8am every day.

Puigdemont has no regrets about calling the 2017 referendum, saying it raised the international profile of the independence struggle. He feels no guilt at being free while his colleagues are imprisoned because he cannot fight for independence from jail. He feels no responsibility for Catalonia’s turmoil, insisting: “The only responsibility is from the Spanish state.”

He says there must be a negotiated solution to the conflict. He hints that Catalonia’s separatist movement would accept something short of full independence provided it receives much more autonomy than it has (Catalonia’s government cannot ban bull fights, for example). “When you start talks you must start with your project. If you end that talks process with an agreement you have obviously moved from your initial position, but the other side has too.”

He believes the independence movement will continue to grow. “It’s very strong, not a soufflé.” He believes Catalonia will achieve independence within his lifetime, but not soon — not even if, in Spain’s general election on November 10, Sánchez defeats the right-wing Popular Party, which favours an even tougher line against the secessionists. “It’s more popular in Spain to beat Catalans than to negotiate. To accuse Catalans, to be against Catalans, creates electoral benefits for Spanish parties,” he says.

And so this bizarre tale of sedition, street battles, repression and exile, which seemingly has no place in modern Europe, will continue. The Catalans will fight on, using social media and international human rights conventions as its weapons. The government will use its security forces.

“One reason the state has failed to win the struggle with Catalonia is because we have designed a conflict in 21st-century terms,” Puigdemont asserts. “Spain responds with tools from the 19th and 20th century.”