VilaWeb: Puigdemont among the candidates to win the Nobel Peace Prize according to Time magazine

This is a translation of an article from Catalan newspaper VilaWeb entitled “Puigdemont, entre els candidats a guanyar el premi Nobel de la Pau segons la revista Time“. VilaWeb publishes some of their own articles in English here.

According to the north-American magazine Time, President Carles Puigdemont is in the running to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which will be announced Friday evening in Oslo. The award is given every year to the person or group which has contributed the most in the advancement of world peace.

“The figurehead of last October’s unofficial Catalan independence referendum has effectively been living in exile in Belgium since he fled the country to avoid arrest by Spanish authorities. The vote precipitated a crackdown by Spain that put hopes for an independent Catalonia on ice for the foreseeable future”, Time says.

Last year, the winner was the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and this year, in addition to Puigdemont, there are nominees such as Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, the leaders of North Korea and South Korea who are immersed in a process of opening of relations, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Pope Francis, among others.

This year there are 331 nominees for the prize, of which 216 are individuals and 115 are groups, according to the Nobel committee. It is the second highest number of candidates, after 2016.