"Puigdemont, to prison!" is one of the chants heard these days in the streets, in the protests called by the right and the extreme right against the approval of an amnesty law – already registered in the Congress of the Deputies – and the agreement of the PSOE with Junts per Catalunya. The mobilizations have placed the former president of the Generalitat in the center of the target, who has asked the Government of Pere Aragonès to provide him with an escort for his safety in the face of the climate of recent days.
The head of the office of former president of Carles Puigdemont, Josep Lluís Alay, sent a letter to the Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, on November 6, so that the leader of Junts, who has resided in Belgium for six years, has protection police in response to "the increased level of danger and risk" detected in relation to him in recent weeks. "It is a public and notorious fact," he adds.
Furthermore, Alay, who refers to the law of the Statute of the former presidents of the Generalitat, remembers that 22 months ago he sent the head of the Interior a letter with that same request without receiving any response and puts the same request on the table "with nature of urgency" by understanding that it is a right that has not been granted. "We demand something to which the former president is entitled by law and it was not granted," say sources from Puigdemont's former president's office, who emphasize that right at this moment, due to the climate of protest, "it is extremely necessary to ask for it again." ".
It should be said that the Catalan executive, with Quim Torra as president, did not take the step either at the time. In fact, in the letter Alay regrets that this demand has been raised since July 2018, when his former president's office was created, "without any type of success" and "rather with silence as a response."
Sources from the Department of the Interior indicate that the Mossos d'Esquadra "do not have powers to act outside Spanish territory." "In order to provide the escort service in Belgium there must be authorization from the Ministry of the Interior and until now it has always been rejected," add the aforementioned sources, who emphasize that this has been the case since Miquel Buch's time as minister. "We have to see if now, as a result of the new political situation, after the approval of the amnesty law, the situation in this also changes," conclude the sources consulted, who assure that in some meetings between the minister and the minister the has addressed the issue without success.
Buch and the agent of the Mossos d'Esquadra Lluís Escolà were convicted in the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia precisely because the policeman, hired as an advisor to the Department of the Interior, had done spy work with the ex-president and is one of the cases who would benefit from the amnesty law if it comes into force.
