WATERLOO, Belgium — Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont said Friday that he is in Belgium after fleeing Spain again. Puigdemont — who has been living in self-imposed exile for seven years since staging an unauthorized referendum for Catalan independence — had reemerged at a rally in Barcelona on Thursday, then quickly disappeared again, evading arrest and sparking a manhunt.

       “Today I am in Waterloo after an extremely difficult few days,” Puigdemont wrote Friday night on social media. “We need to analyze the political situation and put into perspective the deep reason for the operation that made possible what happened yesterday.”

       In Waterloo, before Puigdemont posted on X, a black car with a Spanish license plate rushed into the garage of his home about 7 p.m. Minutes later, a second car, this one with a Belgian plate, drove out of the garage. It was driven by Puigdemont’s wife, Marcela Topor, who would return about two hours later.

       After Topor returned, police pulled up to the house and went inside. A few minutes later, they came out of the house and said they had been summoned by a house security officer who complained about the number of journalists outside and that they were not there for Puigdemont. The police then left.

       In an interview earlier Friday on Catalan radio channel RAC1, Jordi Turull, secretary general of Puigdemont’s Together for Catalonia party, or Junts, said Puigdemont was headed back to Belgium, where he has primarily been based since 2017. Puigdemont’s lawyer also told the radio station that he was no longer in Spain.

       At a news conference Friday before Puigdemont declared his location, the Catalan regional police force said it could not rule out the possibility that he was still in Spain. “[His supporters] want us to believe that he is in Belgium. Until we have evidence, we will keep looking for him,” Mossos d’Esquadra chief Eduard Sallent told reporters.

       Puigdemont’s reappearance in Barcelona on Thursday, when he appeared onstage to address his supporters, was in defiance of an outstanding arrest warrant. His return posed a challenge to Spanish authorities and threatened to renew tensions between Catalan separatists and Madrid. To remain in power and form a coalition government, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party struck a contentious amnesty deal with separatists last year.

       Puigdemont slipped away in the crowd on Thursday soon after appearing at the rally, as supporters carrying Catalan flags and waving his photograph marched toward the regional parliament building.

       It was unclear how Puigdemont made his way into Spain to attend the rally, but Turull said he had been in the region since Tuesday. He said Puigdemont fled by car after his speech Thursday because of security concerns and because he wanted to avoid photographs of him being arrested.

       Sallent said Friday at the news conference that officers had been ready to detain Puigdemont as soon as he finished his speech. But as Puigdemont walked off the stage, his supporters surrounded him, making it impossible for the police to approach, Sallent said.

       Puigdemont and Turull later got into a car to flee the area, Sallent said, adding that police gave chase but ended up losing sight of the car. This prompted a manhunt and security controls throughout Catalonia, including roadblocks and vehicle checks, he added.

       The Mossos press office said Thursday that the vehicle was owned by a police officer, one of two officers detained on suspicion of helping Puigdemont and Turull escape. On Friday, Sallent said the investigation was ongoing and charges for the officers had yet to be determined.

       Spanish opposition politicians seized on the escape to criticize Sánchez’s government, describing it as an “unbearable humiliation” and “a farce.”

       Puigdemont still risks arrest in Spain, despite the new legislation offering amnesty to those involved in the 2017 referendum, which was declared illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court and the centralized government in Madrid.

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

       He was regional Catalan president in 2017 when the independence referendum rocked the country. The Spanish government responded by imposing direct rule on the region, arresting his allies as Puigdemont escaped.

       He was a member of the European Parliament from 2019 until last month and had eluded Spanish efforts to extradite him, including after being detained in Italy and in Germany.

       Puigdemont has centered his political career on the aspiration for the wealthy northeast region’s independence — long one of the most fraught issues in Spanish politics.

       He showed up at the rally Thursday near Catalonia’s parliament in Barcelona ahead of a scheduled induction of a political rival as the new regional president. Analysts described his return as an effort to restore his influence, which has waned in exile.

       The drama of his return and escape — including the live broadcast of the police chase — returned him to the limelight, but it did not stop the parliamentary session from going forward. Salvador Illa, a Socialist who brokered a deal with the region’s other main separatist party, was sworn in Thursday. He officially became the first non-separatist leader of Catalonia in about a decade.

       Francis reported from Munich.