Puigdemont’s closest ally fails to show up in Spanish Court

A businessman and close friend of Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont will not appear before the Spanish National Court on Monday, where he had been summoned for an alleged crime of aiding and abetting.

Josep Maria Matamala and three others accompanying Puigdemont when he was detained in Germany are under investigation by the Spanish judiciary, and were supposed to face the judge today at 10 am. Besides his close friend, Puigdemont's travelling companions included two off-duty Catalan police officers and historian Josep-Maria Alay.

On March 28, Spanish police arrested all of them but Matamala, whose permanent residence is in Belgium but who is currently in Germany, where he regularly accompanies Puigdemont to public events and interviews. Matamala told the Catalan News Agency (ACN) that he has not officially been served a summons to appear in the Spanish Court.

Carles Puigdemont was arrested on March 25 in Germany, near the Danish border. He was in a car on route to Brussels, where he was living at the time. He was released some days later and is currently facing an extradition request. The German prosecutor has asked the judge to send him back to Spain to face charges of rebellion and misuse of public funds. However, in a preliminary decision on the case, the judge said that he didn't see grounds for a crime of rebellion and had detected irregularities related to the misuse of funds charge.