Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who has been living in self-imposed exile for seven years since staging an unauthorized referendum for independence, reemerged in Barcelona on Thursday — and then quickly disappeared again, evading arrest and prompting a manhunt across the region.

       Jordi Turull, the secretary general of Puigdemont’s separatist party, Together for Catalonia, said Friday morning in an interview on Catalan radio that Puigdemont is no longer in Spain and is headed back to Belgium, where he has primarily been based since the 2017 referendum. Puidgemont’s lawyer also told the radio station that he was no longer in Spain.

       The 61-year-old’s return to Spain represented a direct challenge to the country’s authorities and threatens to renew tensions. The Catalan independence movement has long been one of the most fraught issues in Spanish politics.

       Puigdemont appeared briefly onstage Thursday at a rally of his supporters in Barcelona, defying an arrest warrant. “I came to remind them that I am still here,” he said. “We have been persecuted for seven years for wanting to listen to the voice of the people of Catalonia.”

       Police said later that day that they had intended to arrest him in a way that wouldn’t create “public disorder” among the 4,500 people at the rally. But as Puigdemont supporters carrying Catalan flags and waving his photograph marched toward the regional parliament building, he slipped away in the crowd.

       “During this march and taking advantage of the number of people surrounding him, he fled the scene in a vehicle that the police tried to stop but failed to do so,” the regional force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, said in a statement.

       That vehicle was owned by a police officer, who was one of two officers detained Thursday on suspicion of aiding the escape, the Mossos press office said without elaborating.

       While sedition charges against Puigdemont have been dropped, he still faces charges of embezzlement.

       In anticipation of his return, police had sealed off most entrances to the park where the parliament building is located.

       After his disappearance again, police effectively put Barcelona on lockdown, setting up roadblocks and checking vehicles on routes leading out of the city and across the region.

       Spanish opposition lawmakers seized on the escape to criticize Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government. Politicians with the Popular Party, which also opposes Catalonia’s independence movement, described the day’s events as an “unbearable humiliation” and a “farce.”

       A national police union said the regional police’s actions on Thursday were a “scandal and shame.”

       It was unclear exactly when or how Puigdemont had returned to Spain.

       He was a member of the European Parliament from 2019 until last month. He successfully avoided extradition to Spain, including after being detained in Italy and in Germany.

       But in recent days he announced his intention to show up at Catalonia’s parliament in Barcelona for a scheduled induction of a political rival as the new regional president.

       He only made it to his separatist party’s rally beforehand. But while that parliamentary session was underway, the search for him was broadcast live on local television, putting him back in the limelight.

       In a video previewing his plan to return, Puigdemont on Wednesday lamented that he “cannot attend freely” and complained of “a long persecution.”

       “That I can attend the parliament should be normal,” he said. “That to do so risks an arrest that would be arbitrary and illegal is evidence of the democratic anomaly that we have the duty to denounce and fight.”

       A former journalist who was first elected to the Catalan parliament in 2006, Puigdemont has centered his political career on the aspiration for the wealthy northeast region’s independence.

       He was regional Catalan president in 2017 when the breakaway referendum — declared illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court and centralized government in Madrid — rocked the country. The Spanish government imposed direct rule on the region and arrested his allies, while Puigdemont escaped.

       Last year, Sánchez’s Socialist Party struck a contentious deal to remain in power and form a coalition government, offering amnesty to those involved in organizing referendums in 2014 and 2017.

       But the legislation has been challenged by the Supreme Court, raising questions about whether the amnesty deal would allow Puigdemont to be pardoned.

       His appearance in Barcelona is the latest twist in the fallout from the 2017 Catalan independence bid, said Cristina Monge, a political science professor at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. It was also “without a doubt” an attempt to restore his relevance, she added.

       “The Spanish government is not interested in a harder response to Puigdemont” and will be weighing political tensions in its approach, although whether the amnesty deal applies to him will be up to the judiciary, she said.

       Puigdemont has seen his influence wane while in living outside of Spain. He campaigned from France for the most recent regional election, in May. But pro-independence parties lost their governing majority.

       Salvador Illa, a Socialist, got the nod as the next regional president as a result of a deal brokered with the more moderate of the pro-independence parties. On Thursday, he officially became the first non-separatist leader of Catalonia in about a decade.

       Sánchez, who remained quiet through the day about Puigdemont, congratulated Illa. “We have worked together in the most adverse circumstances,” he posted on social media. “I know of your love for Catalonia. I know your composure, common sense and capacity for work. Just what Catalonia needs.”