Spanish VP compares Puigdemont with Republican exiles during Franco

Spain’s vice president Pablo Iglesias has defended calling Catalonia’s former political leader Carles Puigdemont an "exile," contradicting most of his colleagues in government, who see the pro-independence politician as a runaway. In 2017, Puidgemont fled to Belgium to avoid prosecution for calling an unauthorized referendum.

In an interview with the TV show ‘Salvados’, Iglesias offered one of the harshest rebukes of Spain’s role in the Catalan conflict by a Spanish minister. He went as far as acknowledging that Puigdemont’s situation could be compared to that of Republican exiles during the bloody dictatorship of Francisco Franco.