Carles Puigdemont will be a candidate in the Catalan elections | The former regional president benefits from amnesty for independents

“I have decided to run in the upcoming elections for the Parliament of Catalonia,” he said in a speech in Elna, southern France. President of Catalonia during the failed separatist attempt in 2017, after which he went into exile in Belgium.

He added: “I am here to finish the job” of Catalan independence, before saying: “They did not defeat us.”

It will be the third time Puigdemont, from the Together for Catalonia party.He had been a candidate in the Catalan elections since his asylum in Belgium, but he did not take his seat in the previous two elections due to his arrest.

Puigdemont also promised that he would return to Spain if he had the chance to be elected president by the Catalan parliament, in which his party would likely win the election, as it is currently the third power.

He said, “If there is a parliamentary majority that proposes to me to be a candidate for this position, I will leave exile permanently on that day to attend the plenary session of Parliament.”

Last week, the current Catalan President Pere Aragones called for early elections in this region in northeastern Spain. May 12.

The call for elections came on the eve of Spanish representatives approving the draft law Amnesty law For the separatistsWhich is now going through a complex process in the Senate, but is expected to get the final green light in about two months.

Shortly after learning of the election's progress, a smiling Puigdemont told the press that, given the planned schedule, he “could be present” at the discussion of the inauguration of the next Catalan regional president, which could be in the second half of June.

Appointed president of Catalonia in 2016, Puigdemont was at the forefront of a secession attempt the following year, one of the biggest political crises in contemporary Spain.

After the failure of his unilateral declaration of independence, he fled to Belgium and was elected as a member of the European Parliament in the last European elections.