Catalan separatist politician Marta Rovira back in Spain after 6 years

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - Catalan separatist leader Marta Rovira returned to Spain on Friday, after six years of self-exile in Switzerland.

She was able to return without being arrested after the government passed an amnesty bill and a court shelved a case related to protests outside the Barcelona airport in 2019.

The amnesty bill pardoned her for the charge of disobedience for her role in the failed 2017 independence push for Catalonia to break from Spain.

She had also been facing terrorism charges for her role in the Democratic Tsunami airport protest, but Spain’s National High Court said the indictment came too late, in 2023, so it was annulled due to a procedural error.

Rovira was joined by four other politicians and activists who had also been evading arrest abroad. “We went from rebellion to sedition to terrorism … but we are democratic people who want freedom in our country. We are back, more convinced than ever — we are back to finish the job that we left half-finished,” she said on Friday during a rally in Spain. “Onward to a Catalan republic!”

Rovira is the secretary general of the left-wing separatist group ERC. She is the first high-profile separatist leader to return to Spain since the controversial amnesty bill.

She has also been heading the negotiations to form a government in Catalonia, after regional elections in May resulted in a hung parliament.

Her party is in the position to back the non-separatist Socialist Party or to try and form a government with the hard-right separatist party Junts.

Carles Puigdemont, head of Junts who was president of Catalonia in 2017, celebrated her return to Spain. "With the return of the exiles persecuted by the judicial farce that has been the Tsunami case, an injustice is over," he posted on the social network X.

Puigdemont, who ran in the May election, is still self-exiled abroad.

While he was set to be the most powerful beneficiary of the amnesty law, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that the embezzlement charges against him could not be dropped.

However, legal appeals are underway, and the Constitutional Court could decide to the contrary -- which would finally pave the way for the former Catalan leader to return.