Key Catalan separatist leader Marta Rovira returns to Spain

Influential Catalan separatist leader Marta Rovira is back in Spain after more than six years in exile in Switzerland.

The 47-year-old crossed the border between France and Catalonia in a car with four fellow campaigners.

Shortly afterwards, she gave a combative speech in the border community of Cantallops: "We have come back to finish what we left unfinished," she shouted to the cheers of many supporters. They carried a banner reading "Freedom for Catalonia."

Catalonia's pro-independence movement reached a high point in late 2017 with an independence referendum, although it was later declared illegal. A group of separatists leaders fled the country after the referendum to avoid prosecution.

Rovira, who despite being in exile all these years has retained the post of Secretary General of the Republican Left (ERC), which governs Catalonia, said she had "often dreamed of this moment."

The various representatives of the movement would have to act as one again, Rovira said.

"But this democratic and unstoppable movement will never use violence to defend its ideas," she said.

In May, parliament passed an amnesty law for Catalan separatists.

The return of Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont is now eagerly awaited. However, this is proving to be more complicated because the judge responsible does not want to grant the former regional president immunity from prosecution and is upholding an arrest warrant against the 61-year-old.

The judge argues that Puigdemont is guilty of embezzlement by using public funds in the independence referendum which he says also violated the financial interests of the EU. According to the judge, the amnesty law does not provide protection from prosecution for these cases.

Puigdemont has vowed that he would nevertheless return. He would like to become premier of Catalonia again in the wake of the regional elections in mid-May. He has been living in exile in Belgium.