When Catalonia’s separatist president, Carles Puigdemont, made his most potentially fateful decision yet, on 26 October, he chose the elegant, Gothic surroundings of the interior gallery of the Generalitat Palace in Barcelona. This was the moment he retreated from calling regional elections, thereby triggering a unilateral declaration of independence from the Catalan parliament the following day and, shortly afterwards, direct rule from Madrid. He chose, in effect, to ramp up the confrontation.
By Monday, Catalonia was under direct rule and a deposed Puigdemont had fled to Brussels, while Spain’s attorney general sought to charge him with sedition and rebellion, crimes that carry up to 30 years in jail. His only declared allies in Belgium are the rabidly anti-migrant Flemish nationalists.
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