Laurence Dollimore
SPAIN’S troops are on 24/7 alert to block Carles Puigdemont’s return to the country, even ‘in the boot of a car’.
The former Catalan leader faces arrest if he returns to Spain over his role in the region’s independence vote.
He has been living in Belgium in self-imposed exile since the end of October.
Asked if Puigdemont could enter Spain incognito, Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said: “We are taking steps along the border and inside the country, everywhere, to see that that does not happen.
“We are doing it in such a way that he cannot enter (the Catalan parliament) even in the boot of a car.”
He added that he was ‘very worried as one cannot tell what someone like him can do.’
It comes after Puigdemont vowed to form a new government yesterday after the speaker of the Catalan parliament proposed him as president of Catalunya following a snap election in December in which separatist parties just about won an absolute majority.
Zoido said the Guardia Civil were working ‘morning, noon and night’ to prevent Puigdemont’s return.
“He is fleeing Spanish justice and it cannot be he who determines the sequence of events,” he added.
Madrid has said it is not legally possible for Puigdemont to rule from exile.
