Carles Puigdemont has less than 24 hours to return to Spain. The Parliament has officially called for the investiture session of Salvador Illa (PSC) for tomorrow at 10 a.m., and the fugitive has responded through a recorded video confirming that he has already begun the "return journey".
"The Parliament of Catalonia has summoned all the deputies to the investiture debate of the next president of the Generalitat. I have to be there and I want to be there. That is why I have embarked on the return journey from exile", explained the former President of the Generalitat in a video shared on social media shortly after the Chamber's announcement.
The image shows Puigdemont in a close-up, with a white background and the flags of Catalonia and Europe. Nothing more in a video released through the fugitive's official account a few minutes later after the Catalan Chamber confirmed the start of Illa's investiture session for tomorrow at 10 a.m.
Specifically, the Permanent Deputation of the Parliament of Catalonia has approved the session to vote on the presidency of the first secretary of the PSC with the support of all groups except for the abstention of PP and Vox.
In parallel, Junts has called for an "institutional reception" for Puigdemont tomorrow, Thursday, at 9 a.m. on Passeig Lluís Companys in Barcelona, an hour before the start of the investiture session of the PSC leader in the Parliament of Catalonia.
The party has organized this reception at 9 a.m., although it has called for an hour earlier, at 8 a.m., on the mentioned promenade, where the headquarters of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia is located and where the main entrance to Parc de la Ciutadella, where the Parliament is located, is accessed.
Puigdemont breaks his silence to spread his imminent return after announcing it in a letter last weekend: The decision of ERC members to invest the socialist candidate as President of the Generalitat makes the possibility of arrest very real in a few days". He continued: "I have always been aware of this risk, but I preferred to wait to publish this text after knowing the decision of the Republican members so as not to be accused of emotional blackmail."
In a three-page text addressed to the members of his party, he reaffirmed his challenge to Justice, just as he did today in the video released: "If I get arrested, it won't be the first time. I have been in a German prison and another in Italy, I have been arrested in a Belgian police station and summoned by the French anti-terrorist police. All of this, of course, at the request of the Spanish judicial system."
"My ability to attend the Parliament of Catalonia should be normal, risking arrest for doing so, which would be arbitrary and illegal, is evidence of the democratic anomaly that we have a duty to denounce and combat, not because we are independentists, but because we are democrats," he warned in this morning's video.