Spain has issued an international arrest warrant for the President of the self-proclaimed Catalan Republic in exile a day after the same judge jailed eight members of the region’s government pending possible charges over Declaration of independence.

In the latest twist in Spain’s worst political crisis in four decades, a national court judge on issued a European arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont in response to a request from state prosecutors.

Puigdemont  escaped the fate of his team in Brussel with a handful of his ministers after Spanish authorities fired him and his cabinet from office, activating article 155 of the Constitution of Spain, and imposing a direct rule over Catalonia.

The move of Mariano Rajoy government cause a lot of criticism from the legal experts, who argued that a principle of ‘territorial integrity’ can be used for outside forces, but not against the population, expressing will though plebiscite. The criminalisation of referendum undermines the basis of democracy standing  for freedom of thought.