Exiled Catalan leader to say if standing in regional vote

Exiled Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont will on Thursday announce if he intends to stand in a May 12 regional election in Catalonia, northeastern Spain, his team said on Monday.

Puigdemont is currently a member of the European Parliament but his JxCat party wants him to head its list for the Catalan regional elections in the hope he will once again become head of the government of the wealthy region.

He will announce his decision in Elne, a small village in southern France near the border with Spain, according to his team in Brussels.

Puigdemont has lived in the Belgian capital since fleeing Spain to avoid arrest over his role in Catalonia's failed unilateral bid for independence in October 2017.

He led the regional government of Catalonia at the time of the secession bid, which triggered Spain's worst political crisis in decades.

"We went into exile for the same reasons we must return," Puigdemont wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in which he confirmed he would speak in Elne on Thursday evening.

"The future of our nation, and not our personal destiny, has inspired all the decisions we have taken, and it must always be like this," he added.

 Snap election 

 Puigdemont had been expected to head his party's list for the European Parliament elections in June.

But JxCat's plans were upended on Wednesday when Catalan president Pere Aragones unexpectedly dissolved the region's parliament and called the early election.

The following day Spanish MPs approved a draft amnesty law for Catalan separatists involved in the 2017 independence bid, included Puigdemont.

The bill is now before the Senate before it returns to Spain's lower house for final approval.

In an interview published on Sunday in Spanish daily newspaper El Pais, JxCat secretary general Jordi Turull confirmed the party wanted Puigdemont to be its candidate in the Catalan election.

Puigdemont had shown that Catalonia was his "priority", Turull said.

"Now there is the amnesty law, (his) future is not exile but a return."