Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont escapes arrest – again

There was something fitting about the name of the thoroughfare in which Carles Puigdemont was welcomed back to Barcelona on Thursday. Cheering supporters lined el Passeig de Lluis Companys as the former president of Catalonia arrived back in the city after almost seven years of self-imposed exile.

In 1939, seeing that General Franco’s troops were about to enter Barcelona, Companys, another former president of Catalonia, fled to France. Captured near Nantes by the Gestapo, he was returned to Spain where he endured five weeks of torture. A court martial lasting less than an hour then sentenced him to death. Refusing to wear a blindfold, Companys stood barefoot before the firing squad so that he could die touching the soil of his beloved homeland. ‘Per Catalunya!’ (‘For Catalonia!) he shouted as the Civil Guards opened fire. The cause of death was given as ‘traumatic internal haemorrhage’. Decades later as democracy was restored, numerous streets and plazas in Catalonia were named ‘Lluís Companys’ in his honour.

Nearly eighty years later, hidden in the boot of a car to escape arrest, Puigdemont fled to Belgium in 2017 after leading the region’s illegal push for independence from Spain.