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Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont has written an open letter to Quebecers, thanking them for their support for the cause of the region’s independence while denouncing a decision by Ottawa not to let him into the country.

In the letter, distributed to media outlets by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Puigdemont thanks Quebecers for not having “flinched” before “the arsenal of repression deployed by the Spanish state during the referendum of 2017” and before the “violence of the police and legal institutions” of Spain.

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“I have well noted, and not without emotion, the unanimous resolutions of your National Assembly as well as the vigorous mobilization of your citizens’ groups in support of the principles of justice and democracy that we are working to have respected on this side of the Atlantic,” wrote Puigdemont.

The former president says he wants to visit Canada, particularly Quebec, to meet with MNAs and others who support the cause of Catalan independence. However, Puigdemont, in exile from Spain and facing charges of sedition and misuse of public funds laid against him by the Spanish government, is being refused entry by Immigration Canada, a decision he says leaves him “perplexed.”