Barcelona
\nCatalonia\u2019s separatist leader Carles Puigdemont has dreamed since childhood of independence from Spain.<\/p>\n
But the man who has said he is willing to go to jail over the fate of the region has now been removed from office and faces charges of \u201crebellion\u201d after he and his separatist lawmakers voted to declare Catalonia an independent republic.<\/p>\n
The 54-year-old former journalist with the shaggy brown mop of hair has become the face of the Catalan independence movement, both liked and disliked.<\/p>\n
\u201cPuigdemont to jail,\u201d defenders of Spanish unity shout regularly.<\/p>\n
His secession push has prompted hundreds of companies to flee the region since October 1, when he raised the stakes by holding an independence referendum that was banned by the courts and the central government.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, Spain\u2019s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he had dissolved the Catalan Parliament and called regional elections on December 21 under sweeping powers approved by the Senate to stop the secessionist movement.<\/p>\n
Rajoy said he had also formally removed Puigdemont and his executive from office as part of measures to \u201crestore normality\u201d after the Catalan parliament voted to declare independence.<\/p>\n
So where does the determination of this married father of two girls come from?<\/p>\n
In a biography published in 2016, Carles Porta, a journalist and friend of Puigdemont, describes him as an \u201chonest and resilient\u201d man, a dyed-in-the-wool partisan of independence.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has this quality (or this flaw): he\u2019s stubborn,\u201d Porta wrote.<\/p>\n
But a high-ranking critic who knows him but refused to be identified in order to speak freely, said he \u201cdoes not have much preparation… to take on this big challenge\u201d, even though he has the independence of Catalonia \u201cin his blood, as a unique driving force\u201d.<\/p>\n
Puigdemont\u2019s destiny changed in January 2016 when he was selected to lead a coalition of separatist parties which had won a majority of regional parliament seats, with a mandate to pursue independence.<\/p>\n
Mayor of the city of Girona since 2001 and a lawmaker in the regional parliament, Puigdemont replaced Artur Mas as the Catalan president, becoming the Spanish government\u2019s public enemy number one.<\/p>\n
He does though share one thing in common with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy: both suffered serious car accidents when they were younger.<\/p>\n
Rajoy has his scars hidden under his beard, Puigdemont on his forehead, under his fringe.<\/p>\n
Puigdemont was born in Amer, a small mountain village of 2,200 people, on December 29, 1962, the second of eight siblings.<\/p>\n
The son and grandson of bakers, he was just nine when he was sent to boarding school and \u201clearnt to be a fighter\u201d, Porta says.<\/p>\n
He was 13 when Spain\u2019s dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975.<\/p>\n
Hugely attached to the Catalan language and passionate about history, the teenager would forever remember Franco\u2019s severe repression of the region.<\/p>\n
In 1980, he joined Convergencia Democratica de Catalunya, the conservative and nationalist party which became the Catalan European Democratic Party in 2016.<\/p>\n
Hired in 1982 by the nationalist newspaper El Punt Avui, he rose up through the ranks and became editor, combining journalism with activism.<\/p>\n
At the time, pro-independence Catalans were still a minority.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 1991, he travelled to the Republic of Slovenia, which had just declared independence from Yugoslavia after a banned referendum, followed by a brief armed conflict.<\/p>\n
In the following years, he sought to widen support for independence, always by peaceful means, inspired by India\u2019s icon, Mahatma Gandhi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barcelona Catalonia\u2019s separatist leader Carles Puigdemont has dreamed since childhood of independence from Spain. But the man who has said he is willing to go to jail over the fate of the region has now been removed from office and faces charges of \u201crebellion\u201d after he and his separatist lawmakers voted to declare Catalonia an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8802,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8800\/revisions\/8802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}