Spain seeks answers after Puigdemont evades arrest

Fugitive Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has left Spain for Belgium after briefly addressing supporters in Barcelona, his party said Friday, raising questions over how he was able to evade arrest again.

Puigdemont, who fled abroad after leading a failed 2017 independence bid for Catalonia, defied a pending arrest warrant to return to Spain on Thursday and delivered a speech to thousands gathered at the Catalan regional parliament in Barcelona before vanishing.

The 61-year-old had been expected to try to enter the parliament building for a debate and vote to pick a new leader for the wealthy northeastern region, but instead disappeared into the crowd.

"He is on his way back to Waterloo," the secretary general of Puigdemont's hardline separatist party JxCAT, Josep Turull, told Catalan radio in a reference to the Belgian city where he has spent most of the past seven years.

Puigdemont's lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, told Catalan radio earlier on Friday that his client had fled abroad again, without giving details. Puigdemont will speak "today or tomorrow," he added.

But Eduard Sallent, the head of Catalonia's regional police force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, said he did not "rule out" that Puigdemont was still in Barcelona.

"Until we have proof that he is outside the jurisdiction of the Mossos d'Esquadra, we will continue to look for him," he told a Barcelona news conference.

Catalonia's regional police said Thursday it had arrested two officers, including one who owned the car used by Puigdemont to leave the scene.

The force, which has launched a manhunt for Puigdemont, denied there had been any collusion and insisted officers had planned to arrest him "at the most opportune time so as not to generate public disorder".