November 14, 2023
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain is expected to approve a request to provide bodyguards for fugitive Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont days after he reached an agreement to back acting Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's bid for another term in exchange for an amnesty, a government minister said on Tuesday.
Tensions are running high in Spain over a controversial amnesty law agreed with Puigdemont's party Junts that will exculpate hundreds of politicians and activists involved in an attempt to separate Catalonia from Spain that peaked in 2017.
Puigdemont, who is the subject of an extradition order for leading the failed attempt, is likely to be the most high profile beneficiary of the amnesty law, a draft of which was registered in parliament on Monday.
His office first filed a request for "protection and security" from the authorities in 2018 and has habitually refiled it without success.
On November 6, in a letter seen by Reuters, Puigdemont's office argued that there had been "an increase in the level of danger and risk". His spokesperson declined to provide further details.
Cabinet Minister Felix Bolanos said the request was likely to be approved, saying every Spanish citizen had a right to safety "no matter how many ideological differences there may be", in a radio interview on RAC1, a Catalan-language radio station.
Opposition leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo, of the centre-right People's Party that is leading protests against the amnesty, said the security agreement was "surprising".
"(Puigdemont) wields enormous power," he told reporters. "He's gone from having an arrest warrant for him to be handed over to the Spanish police to being escorted by the Spanish police."
Puigdemont, who has been living in exile in Waterloo, Belgium since 2017, has been the target of taunts and insults when confronted by Spaniards who see him as the leader of an attempted coup.
In 2018, he was approached in a shopping centre in Copenhagen by a young Spaniard who asked him to kiss the Spanish flag. Puigdemont agreed, saying he had "no problem" doing so.
Having secured Junts' backing, Sanchez, in power since 2018, looks assured of winning a new term in an investiture vote on Thursday. The prospect of amnesty has brought thousands of opponents to the streets for 12 days in a row.
(Reporting by Charlie Devereux and Joan Faus, additional reporting Emma Pinedo, editing by Aislinn Laing)
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