Jordi Pujol to rest at home after leaving hospital, according to his doctor

The former president of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol, will have to stay at home and recover after leaving hospital on Friday, instead of lead a normal life, according to his personal doctor, Jaume Padrós.

Pujol left the Sagrada Família Clinic in Barcelona today after a "favorable evolution" of a bout of pneumonia he has been suffering from over the past week.

After 11 years, the National Court scheduled the beginning of his trial on November 24. Members of his family and 16 more people are facing allegations of corruption, accused of unlawful assembly, money laundering, crimes against the tax office, and forging documents.

Head of the Catalan government for over two decades (1980-2003) with his nationalist center-right CiU coalition, the politician admitted in 2014 that his family had had a significant amount of money in Andorra for decades, not declared in Spain's tax office, and said that was part of his father's inheritance.

Jordi Pujol has been the longest-serving Catalan president in modern times. The court believes that his relatives may have benefited from the patriarch's post to get contracts from the Catalan government.

"A person who is 95 years old and has many underlying health issues is very frail, and the risk is higher for pneumonia," doctor Jaume Padrós said in an interview with Catalunya Ràdio.

Padrós also asked that Pujol's court appearance by videoconference on Monday to assess his health not be made public.

The corruption trial against Pujol and members of his family is scheduled to behin on Monday in the Natoinal Court in Madrid. 

"The public exposure of a fragile person does not seem appropriate to me," the doctor said. "From a human point of view, it is a violation of his dignity and honor, beyond the position and having been president of the country," he argued.

Padrós explained that pneumonia that requires hospitalization "is not something trivial." For this reason, he said that the former president will have to continue treatment from home.

Jordi Pujol's personal doctor has stated that the former president wants to be at the trial in person, but the doctors consider that he is not in appropriate conditions to face it.

The forensic report commissioned by the National Court concludes that the former Catalan president is not fit to stand trial, but has also summoned him to appear on Monday to assess his health.