On a cold and dark Wednesday evening, Toni Comín walks through the corridors of the European Parliament in Brussels like someone who feels at home. People greet him warmly, like someone they don’t see often – a strange situation for a member of the Parliament.
Except that Comín is an MEP only on paper. He has no office, no assistants, no tasks to perform, and of course, no payslip. Even the badge he uses to enter the Parliament is different from his colleagues’ ones.
Due to a complex legal issue, this 54-year-old Spanish lawmaker is an elected member of the European Parliament, but cannot act as such. He can enter the building with a card from the previous legislature and enjoys parliamentary immunity, but he cannot attend official meetings, draft laws in committees, or take the floor in plenary sessions.
To understand why, it is necessary to go back to October 2017.
The son of a prominent Catalan Socialist politician, Comín was then Health Minister of the regional government of Catalonia, the Generalitat de Catalunya, which at that time was attempting to secede from Spain.
The Generalitat went so far as to promote a referendum on Catalonia’s independence, which was deemed illegal by Spain’s government but proceeded regardless. Polling day was marred by police intervention, with some episodes of violence.
The Catalan government declared independence on 27 October that year, a move immediately followed by Spain’s application of an emergency power to restore order. Five Generalitat members left the country in secret the next day, among them Comín and the then-Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont.
Since then, their stories have been closely intertwined.
Wanted by the Spanish judiciary for rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds, the two politicians took refuge in Belgium, where they both are currently living. Spain has never managed to extradite them, despite several attempts and a long series of legal disputes.
Puigdemont and Comín also stood in the 2019 European elections as candidates for the centre-right party they co-founded, Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia), and both were elected to the European Parliament. But they were allowed to take their seats as MEPs only in 2020, after a ruling by the European Court of Justice.
Spain’s electoral authorities require any person elected to the European Parliament to take an oath in person in Spain, making it impossible for the Catalan fugitives to take office without returning home and facing arrest. This obstacle was finally cleared by the European Court, but it returned when Comín was re-elected in 2024.
“A new ruling overturned the previous one, basically claiming that I am an MEP, but the Parliament should respect Spain’s decision on granting the exercise of a mandate”, Comín told Euronews. “It is the difference between being an MEP and doing the MEP’s job.”
This paradox means the current Parliament has 719 members rather than 720, as while the Catalan lawmaker cannot sit as an MEP without Spain swearing him in, he cannot be replaced either.
What he can do for now is meet colleagues.
“I am here roughly twice a month, trying to keep my network,” he said, noting that while some Spanish lawmakers do not want to talk to him at all, others are happy to.
“I have good contacts with some MEPs from the Greens/EFA, from the Left and Renew Europe group.”
The rest of his time, he says, is dedicated to political activity and to writing a memoir at home in the Belgian town of Louvain-la-Neuve.
“It’s a 700-page book with all my history,” he said, joking that he is still looking for an appropriate title. “It will be finished by Christmas or a little after, and published next year.”
A fight from abroad
During the eight years of his self-imposed exile, Comín has continued pursuing the cause of Catalan independence, acting as Puigdemont’s right-hand man.
Together for Catalonia remained in power at the regional level for years after the failed independence attempt, and while it is now in opposition in the Catalan Parliament, it helps keep Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in power by not voting against it in no-confidence motions.
Sánchez’s socialist-leaning government has pursued reconciliation with Catalonia’s pro-independence forces, which granted him their support (or at least, not opposition) in the Spanish Parliament in exchange for an amnesty law covering the politicians involved in the events of October 2017.
But not everything has been sorted out. The Spanish Supreme Court has challenged the application of the amnesty regarding the crime of misuse of public funds; Puigdemont, Comín, and others recurred to the Constitutional Court against the Supreme Court, but until the legal struggle is resolved, the Spanish warrant for their arrest remains in force.
“We cannot go there, so the political meetings of our parties are held in Belgium. Every month, the high ranks came here from Barcelona, and we meet in Puigdemont’s place, in Waterloo”, Comín said.
His relationship with the main leader of Catalan separatism is both political and emotional. “After what we have experienced together, I am sure our friendship can survive everything. We are more than party comrades, we are brothers of exile.”
Together, they have been running their party from abroad through a rollercoaster of events, including detentions, chaoticefforts to establish a government in exile, and personal troubles.
Last January, Comín was accusedof sexual and psychological harassment by a parliamentary assistant to another MEP of his own party, who made a formal complaint to the Parliament about his alleged behaviour. In a statement released at the time, he described the accusations as totally unfounded and aimed at damaging him politically. The case remains suspended until Comín is admitted as an MEP.
Hope on the horizon
While Comín and his colleagues’ long-term goal is still Catalonia’s independence from Spain, the short-term goal is getting home. The years since 2016 have seen no progress on goal number one: the 2017 enthusiasm for an independent republic has progressively waned, the Generalitat is now led by Catalan Socialists opposed to independence, and separatists abroad have received little or no support.
A return to Spain, however, could be on the horizon. If a total amnesty for the Catalan separatist leaders is granted, they would have the right to return to Catalonia without facing arrest.
This could clear the way for Puigdemont to try and regain power in regional elections, while for Comín, it would allow him to be sworn in to take his seat in the European Parliament. It is the fastest way to become a proper MEP, more likely than his appeals pending in the courts, and he is feeling optimistic.
“I have 90% of the possibility to make it before the end of the mandate”, he said.
He misses the Parliament’s real work, the possibility to draft policies and fight political battles, such as the lifting of vaccine patents that he had pursued in the previous legislature.
But even more than that, he misses Catalonia, as well as his partner and his daughter, who is attending secondary school there. He recalls the freedom of travelling back to his hometown, Barcelona, and he sighs.
“The feeling of being in exile is like fatherhood, but the opposite: you can’t imagine how painful it is until you experience it yourself.”
