Carles Puigdemont, the deposed Catalan president, has been detained by police at the German border after Spain reactivated an international warrant for his arrest on charges of rebellion over October’s referendum and declaration of independence.
Mr Puigdemont’s lawyer, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, said on Twitter that he was detained while crossing the border from Denmark by car on his way back to Belgium from Finland, where he had travelled to speak at an event.
"By now he is in a police station and his legal defence has already been activated," Mr Alonso-Cuevillas said.
The Spanish Supreme Court reissued European Arrest Warrants for Mr Puigdemont and four members of his former cabinet on Friday after charging 13 Catalan independence leaders with rebellion and misappropriation of funds. The charges could see them jailed for up to 30 years.
International arrest warrants were issued for two other separatist politicians, Ana Gabriel and Marta Rovira, who are currently in self-imposed exile in Switzerland.
Independence supporters have taken to the streets across Catalonia over the prosecutions, and the jailing on Friday of five of the charged separatists including Jordi Turull, who was due to be inaugurated as president on Saturday morning.
Mr Alonso-Cuevillas insisted that Mr Puigdemont had intended to deliver himself to authorities in Belgium, where he fled after Madrid dissolved his government and imposed direct rule in late October.
A previous attempt to extradite him fell apart when the Spanish Supreme Court cancelled the request just as a Belgian judge was about to rule on it, apparently due to fears the most serious crime of rebellion would be struck out.
On Saturday, Mr Puigdemont’s lawyers had said he would present himself to authorities in Finland, where the Spanish court made the latest extradition request.
But on Saturday night, they said he had already left Finland, and on Sunday morning, that his whereabouts were unknown.
The German magazine Focus reported that Spanish intelligence had been monitoring Mr Puigdemont's location and that when he began travelling from Finland towards Germany they alerted the German police.
Scottish authorities said they had received a European Arrest Warrant for Clara Ponsati, the former education minister who recently left Belgium after four months of exile to return to her post at St Andrews University.