President Illa to meet with Carles Puigdemont in Brussels tomorrow

The Catalan president, Salvador Illa, will meet with the former Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, in Brussels on Tuesday afternoon.

The meeting will occur at 4:15 pm at the Catalan governmental delegation at the EU in the Belgian capital. Media outlets can record videos and take photos of the start of the gathering.

The meeting will happen a year after Socialist Salvador Illa was named the 133rd president on August 8, after winning the May 2024 election. Illa received the support of the Socialist party, pro-independence Esquerra Republicana, and left-wing En Comú Podem.

Pro-independence Junts secretary general Jordi Turull told RAC1 radio station that President Salvador Illa requested the meeting. However, the gathering is being held "very late." However, "for respect to the institution, the meeting will occur."

Junts had been requesting a gathering for months, after Illa had been meeting with former presidents such as Pere Aragonès, Artur Mas, or Jordi Pujol. Illa also visited Spain's King Felipe VI in a historic visit to Zarzuela palace.

Puigdemont and Junts also expect the Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez to request a meeting with the former leader.

The meeting will take place in Brussels, as Puigdemont continues to live in Belgium after leaving Spain in 2017 following the referendum. He briefly returned to Catalonia on August 8, 2024 before escaping police and a potential detention and reappearing in Waterloo, Belgium, a day later.

Illa: "Now is the time"

"Now is the time," president Illa said of his upcoming meeting with Puigdemont.

"I said that I would meet with him when the time came, and I believe that now is the time to send a message: in a democracy, dialogue is the first engine, the one that starts the car," he told Catalunya Ràdio and TV3.

Illa explained that the decision was his and that he took the initiative to ask the Junts leader for the meeting. He also stated that he would have liked it to have taken place at the Catalan government headquarters building "many months ago."

The Socialist head assured that he is working on having the amnesty law applied, arguing it's publicly the "right decision."