ROME (AP) – Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, whom Spain is seeking for a failed attempt at independence in 2017, was due to appear at an extradition hearing on Friday after his arrest in Sardinia, an Italian island with strong Catalan cultural roots and a secessionist movement of its own.
On Thursday night, Italian police transferred Puigdemont to a prison in Sassari, a city near Alghero, where he was arrested upon arrival at the airport. Alghero hosts a traditional Catalan folklore festival that the former regional president was expected to attend.
“Freedom, freedom,” protesters chanted in front of the court in Sassari. They raised posters with the legend in Sardinian dialect “Democracy, the Sardinian nation supports the Catalan nation” and flags of Sardinia and Catalonia. When he was regional president in 2016-2017, Puigdemont promoted secession.
He currently has a seat in the European Parliament, which nevertheless stripped him of immunity.
Puigdemont’s arrest caused a stir in Spain, where Catalan independence has been the source of deep divisions for decades. The separatists demanded their freedom and called for demonstrations, while the center-right parties said they should answer to justice.
His Italian lawyer, Agostinangelo Marras, told the press in front of the court that an appeals judge would hold a hearing to decide whether to keep his detention or release him during the extradition process. The judge’s decision “will be based on documents that I and the judge must evaluate,” Marras said without going into detail.
The lawyer said he spoke with Puigdemont, and said he is fine. “He has faith that the matter will be resolved as soon as possible,” he said. Asked if he had any hope of being released, Marras replied: “evidently.”
The president of the Spanish government Pedro Sánchez said on Friday during an official visit to the Canary Islands that he respects “all judicial procedures that are opened in Spain, in Europe and, in this case, that can be taken in Italy.”
Sánchez, who recently began direct conversations with the Catalan regional authorities, said that “dialogue is the only way for Catalans who think differently to meet again and Catalans meet again with citizens who live in the rest of Spain.”
Just under half of Catalans want to separate from Spain, according to polls. Most Spaniards oppose Catalan independence.
The heart of the immediate legal problem is whether the arrest warrant for Puigdemont issued by Spain is valid. His lawyer in Spain, Gonzalo Boye, explained on Thursday that the pro-independence politician is detained in Italy based on a 2019 Euro arrest warrant, which had been suspended.
Ultimately, it is up to the Italian Ministry of Justice to approve or deny the extradition. The Spanish Supreme Court, which issued the European arrest warrant, did not comment.
Puigdemont and other Catalan pro-independence politicians fled to Belgium in October 2017 for fear of arrest after holding a regional independence referendum that had been outlawed by the judiciary and the government.
Nine politicians and activists later received prison terms of between nine and 13 years for their participation in the consultation. They were pardoned in July but Puigdemont, who was a fugitive from justice, was not.
The Catalan leader has a seat in the European Parliament, although the community chamber withdrew his parliamentary immunity.
In a statement on the arrest of Puigdemont in Sardinia, the Spanish government said that it “obeys an ongoing judicial procedure that applies to any citizen in the European Union who must answer for their actions before the courts.”
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The Associated Press journalist Renata Brito in Barcelona contributed to this report