Carles Puigdemont y Casamage (cat. Carles Puigdemont i Casamajó) is a Catalan journalist and politician, the suspended president of the Catalan Generalitat and a member of the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT).
Place of Birth. Education. Carles Puigdemont was born on December 29, 1962 in Amer (province of Girona). The son of Xavier Pujidmont and Nuria Casamaggio, he is the second of eight brothers from a family of confectioners. Although his family is not directly involved in politics, his great-grandfather and his uncle Josep Pujdemton (1979-1983) were mayors of Amer.
He attended high school in his hometown of Amer and a boarding school in Santa Maria del Collell. He studied Catalan Philology at the University of Girona, from which he later left without graduating to work in journalism. At the age of 16 he was already a correspondent for the newspaper "Los Sitios", Girona.
Career. In 1981 he started working for the newspaper "El Punt", where he eventually became the editor-in-chief. He also worked for the Presència magazine. Subsequently, he became director of the Catalan News Agency, as well as the English-language weekly Catalonia Today.
Activist of the political association "Convergence and Union" (CiU) since 1983.
Political career. In 2006, he began his political career, becoming a member of the Catalan Parliament from the Convergence and Union party.
In 2011 he was elected mayor of Girona.
In July 2015, he became chairman of the Association of Municipalities for the Independence of Catalonia.
On September 27, 2015, he was elected as a deputy from the Girona party "Together for Yes" in the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia.
On January 10, 2016, he took office as President of the Generalitat, succeeding Arthur Mas. This was made possible thanks to a compromise reached the day before by the Together for Yes bloc and the CUP party. On January 11, 2016, he resigned as mayor of Girona because he was not allowed to be president and mayor at the same time. On January 14, he introduced the new government of Catalonia, of which he is the default chairman.
He was the first President of the Generalitat of Catalonia who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Spanish constitution and the current monarch, Philip VI.
October 1, 2017 - organized and held an illegitimate and internationally unrecognized referendum on the independence of Catalonia.
October 10, 2017 - Together with other members of his government, he signed the declaration of independence of Catalonia.
October 21, 2017 - deposed by decree of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, which is also confirmed by the Spanish Senate.
October 30, 2017 Attorney General of Spain Jose Manuel Masa charged Puigdemont and 13 senior Catalan officials with rebellion and corruption, demanding their immediate arrest in case of failure to appear in court, but at that moment Puigdemont was already in Brussels (according to press reports, he applied to the Belgian authorities for political asylum) .
In 2018, he founded a new movement, the National Call for a Republic, to unite the separatists of Catalonia.
On March 23, 2018, the Spanish authorities renewed the European arrest warrant for Puigdemont on charges of sedition, mutiny and misuse of public funds. On March 25, Puigdemont, returning from a trip to Finland, where he met with local parliamentarians, was detained by German police when he crossed the Danish-German border by car. On April 5, the Schleswig-Holstein Regional Court released Puigdemont from arrest and ruled that it was impossible to extradite him to Spain on charges of rebellion, since in this case he could become the first political prisoner in the European Union.
On May 10, 2018, while in Berlin, he announced his refusal to nominate his candidacy for the presidency of the Generalitat of Catalonia in favor of Kim Torra.
On July 20, 2018, a Spanish court withdrew the international arrest warrant for Puigdemont.
On May 26, 2019, Carles Puigdemont was elected as an MP in the elections in European Parliament. Puigdemont heads the list of the Catalan coalition Free for Europe (Lliures per Europa), but did not officially take office because he did not take the oath in the building of the Spanish Parliament due to the threat of arrest. On 20 December 2019, Puigdemont was accredited as an MEP after the European Court of Justice ruled that he was allowed to carry out his duties as an MEP.
Catalan independence referendum. On September 6, 2017, the Catalan Parliament approved a referendum on independence. The Spanish Constitutional Court suspended the law adopted by the Parliament of Catalonia, but the Catalans still passed a law on the procedure for secession from Spain and the transition period. Spain's public prosecutor launched criminal prosecutions against Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and members of the government after the Catalan parliament supported the idea of an independence referendum.
On October 2, 2017, the government of Catalonia published the preliminary results of the referendum on the independence of the region after processing 99% of the ballots: 90.09% of the citizens of the autonomous community voted "for" independence from Spain, 7.87% - "against".
On October 27, 2017, the regional parliament of Catalonia voted to recognize independence from Spain. Later that day, the Spanish Senate granted Madrid the right to introduce direct rule in Catalonia. On October 28, 2017, according to the decisions of the Spanish government, Catalonia was temporarily deprived of autonomy, its government, headed by Carles Puigdemont in full force, and the head of the regional police, Josep Luis Trapero, were dismissed. Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria has been appointed interim head of the region.
Hobbies. Carles Puigdemont is passionate about new technologies and social media. On Twitter, he has written over 14,500 messages and has over 324,000 followers.
Family. Carles Puigdemont has been married since 2000 to the Romanian journalist Marcel Topor, two daughters were born in the marriage.
Speaks Catalan, English, French, Spanish and Romanian.
December 24, 2024