Puigdemont: Main Absentee from Catalan Separatists' Trial

His place on the defendants' bench may be empty, because he fled Spain before he could be arrested, but he was ever-present in the testimony of witnesses.

And now, with his recent election as a deputy in the European Parliament, he is even more difficult to ignore.

"To all those who wanted to denigrate us, reduce us to silence, I tell them that we will defend ourselves, and we will do it well," the 56-year-old said after his election win, speaking from self-exile in Belgium.

Born in Amer, a small mountainous village of 2,200 people in Catalonia, the second of eight children, Puigdemont is renowned as a staunch separatist.

"In Catalonia, many people became separatists in an allergic reaction to Madrid's policies," said Antoni Puigverd, a poet and journalist who was once close to Puigdemont, AFP reported.

"Not him, he always had these convictions."

Puigdemont has never hidden his separatist tendencies, not even when he joined the conservative CDC party in 1980 at a time when it merely wanted to negotiate greater autonomy for Catalonia rather than a full break from Spain.

For 17 years he worked for Catalonia's nationalist daily newspaper El Punt and was also mayor of the city of Girona -- a separatist stronghold -- from 2011 to 2016.

Married to a Romanian journalist with whom he has two daughters, Puigdemont was virtually unknown when he was propelled to the presidency of Catalonia in January 2016 with a mandate to lead it to independence.

He was thrust into the global spotlight in October 2017 when his executive held an outlawed referendum on self-determination, marred by police violence that led to a quickly thwarted declaration of independence.

Madrid sacked Puigdemont and his executive, dissolved the local parliament, called snap regional elections and imposed direct rule on the semi-autonomous, wealthy northeastern region.

Puigdemont opted to escape to Belgium, leaving behind colleagues such as his deputy Oriol Junqueras, who is now the most high-profile defendant actually present at the trial. He faces up to 25 years in jail if convicted.

For this, his political enemies brand him a "fugitive" and a "coward".

"One sleeps in prison, the other in a mansion in Waterloo," Spanish conservative MEP Esteban Gonzalez Pons said recently.

He was referring to the so-called "House of the Republic" in the Belgian city of Waterloo where Puigdemont lives and follows the trial from afar.

But neither the criticism nor the months of attention heaped onto his Catalan colleagues on trial have eclipsed Puigdemont.

His separatist party Together for Catalonia may have lost ground in an April general election and again in May municipal polls, with Junqueras's ERC grouping making gains.

But it came first in Catalonia in elections to the European Parliament on May 26, with Puigdemont at the helm.

But in order to validate his election as an MEP, he is supposed to come to Spain to swear allegiance to the constitution, which would entail his immediate arrest.

He has promised to fight to overcome this obstacle so he can fulfil his mandate and continue his struggle against Madrid at the European Parliament.