Former minister Lluís Puig returns to parliament after nine years in exile

Lluís Puig, who was Catalonia's Minister of Culture during the October 1, 2017, independence referendum, returned to the Catalan Parliament on Thursday after nine years in exile. 

Speaking before representatives from the Socialists, Junts, ERC, the People's Party, the Comuns, the CUP and Aliança Catalana, a visibly emotional Puig said he remains "firmly" committed to the independence cause. 

Catalan President Salvador Illa, members of his government and the Vox parliamentary group chose not to attend.

Speaker Josep Rull opened the plenary session by celebrating that Puig is "once again fully exercising his political rights." Rull recalled earlier presidents of Parliament and the Catalan government who were forced into exile or had to live abroad, such as Lluís Companys and Josep Irla. 

"Exile is a concept that is dramatically familiar to this chamber," he said. He called Puig's recovery of his seat "a powerful image of a collective victory, the victory of an entire nation." 

Before speaking, Puig removed the yellow ribbon that had occupied his seat since the start of the legislative term, with former Catalan President Artur Mas and former Vice President Oriol Junqueras present. 

"We have endeavored to represent the will and persistence of our people everywhere," he said, adding that those in exile have established "social, cultural, and political dialogue on the international stage."

Puig said the legal cases linked to Catalonia’s independence push "set a precedent in European law, based on the Catalan case."

He said the Spanish state suffered "two major defeats," in the courts and in politics, and he celebrated the "absolute failure" of attempts to make the “convictions” held by the pro-independence movement "disappear."

"The country is not the same, and rightly so," he said. 

He criticized the lack of "even a single substantial initiative" on the climate emergency and pointed to the ongoing problems with Catalonia’s commuter rail network, the protests of the past year and the situation of the Catalan language. 

Addressing Catalan president Illa, who wasn't in the chamber, he lamented that since 2017 "there has been no proposal for a political model" to resolve the conflict between Catalonia and the Spanish state. 

"That is why I can do nothing other than continue to declare myself a committed pro-independence advocate," he said, to applause.