BRUSSELS: Deposed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont said on Wednesday that he will stay in Belgium “for now” despite Spain dropping European arrest warrants against him and four former ministers. Puigdemont accused Spain of backtracking on the warrants, which are on charges of sedition and rebellion over Catalonia’s illegal independence referendum, only because it was “scared of world opinion”. He said that if his party wins elections in Catalonia on December 21 then “we should return” but did not give any further details of whether he would actually go back for the polls. “When I arrived here, I did not come to Belgium, I came to Brussels the capital of Europe, where we could better defend our rights, and that will not change,” Puigdemont told a news conference in Brussels. Published in Daily Times, December 7th 2017.