Despite his party saying he had returned to Belgium, Catalan police say separatist leader Puigdemont could still be in Spain
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00:00Next, former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont is said to have left for Belgium after managing
00:06to flee an arrest warrant.
00:08Puigdemont made a sensational return to Spain on Thursday after a seven-year exile following
00:13a failed independence bid in 2017.
00:16Catalan police say they've arrested two of their own officers for their alleged involvement
00:21in the 61-year-old's getaway.
00:23Well, for more, let's cross now to Madrid, where our correspondent Sarah Morris is standing
00:27by for us.
00:28Sarah, just what do we know at this point regarding his whereabouts?
00:34Well, his lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, says that he has left the country and the Secretary
00:40General of Puigdemont's party, Junts, says that basically he has headed back over the
00:48French border towards Belgium and back to his house in Waterloo, where he fled in 2017
00:57after that independence declaration.
01:00The lawyer of Carles Puigdemont actually says that he will appear, make some kind of address
01:06or message to his supporters in the next few days.
01:10Now, Turull, who is the Secretary General, has been talking and saying that Puigdemont
01:16has been in Barcelona since Tuesday night and that he had dinner and that he slept in
01:23Barcelona.
01:24So, giving the impression that he was able to get through the border where there were
01:30police looking out for him and actually move around Barcelona in some way, shape or form
01:37until he did that appearance, a six-minute speech, right in the centre of Barcelona at
01:44the Arc de Triomphe, where he addressed supporters and railed against the Spanish state, and
01:50then slipped into the back of the stage.
01:55And what people don't understand, really, is how the Mossos police force did not intercept
02:02him.
02:03He seems to have moved from the centre of the stage out and disappeared.
02:08And the reports suggest that a white, off-duty Mossos police car, a Honda, took him towards
02:17the Spanish, to the French border and out of the country.
02:22And the judge who is leading the main case against Carlos Puigdemont, Pablo Llarena,
02:29has asked both the Catalan police and the Spanish police service to give him reports
02:35about what went wrong yesterday, why wasn't that international, that arrest warrant carried
02:42out.
02:43And there are many questions unanswered among the police, I'm sure, at how they let Puigdemont
02:49get away, as you mentioned.
02:50What's the reaction and response to that been so far?
02:56The response is, across the board, bewilderment and a great deal of anger, particularly from
03:03the Conservative headquarters.
03:06The Conservative leader, Alberto Núñez-Feijóo, says that the interior minister and the defence
03:11minister who heads up the intelligence services, that they should both resign.
03:17And he wants to hear from Pedro Sánchez, the socialist prime minister, about really
03:22why this happened and why he wasn't arrested.
03:26Two local police officers have been arrested and questioned.
03:31And the suspicion is basically that this may have been a similar operation to the one in
03:362017 when Carlos Puigdemont left the country, that somebody inside the police office actually
03:44helped him and cooperated with him and were not carrying out the orders from the courts.
03:53And a great deal of anger and many people in the media saying that this was an embarrassment,
04:02that it humiliated Spain, that it was really a farcical situation.
04:07The only kind word really has come from El PaĂs, the left-wing newspaper, basically
04:13pointing out that despite this big show by Carlos Puigdemont, he did not scupper the
04:20formation of a socialist-led government in Catalonia.
04:25The deadlock there has been broken after those May elections.
04:29And Salvador Illa promised his supporters it would be time to get back to bread-and-butter
04:34issues that over a decade had been lost to the separatist push and that now he would
04:41be addressing issues like climate change, like poverty, and basically, he said, trying
04:48to govern for all Catalans.
04:50Right, our correspondent Sarah Morris reporting for us there from Madrid, thank you very much
04:55for that update.