[2][3] On 30 October 2017, she went into exile in Brussels together with Carles Puigdemont and three other members of his government, Lluís Puig, Antoni Comín and Meritxell Serret.

[5] In the 2019 Spanish municipal elections, she was placed last on the list of the candidacy Barcelona és capital - Primàries, led by Jordi Graupera.

[11] Her views on the relations between Catalonia and Spain caused the Spanish Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, to state: "una cátedra en el extranjero no debe servir de base para alentar procesos secesionistas contrarios a la Constitución", (This chair abroad should not be used to encourage support to secession movements contrary to the Constitution), remarking: "mientras yo sea ministro no ocurrirá en ninguna embajada española" (As long as I'm the minister this will not occur in any Spanish embassy).

From mid-2016 to July 2017, she was a member of the National Secretariat of l'Assemblea Nacional Catalana, just before being appointed as Minister of Education in the remodelling of the Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya carried out by President Puigdemont.

[19] In April 2019 Cara Ponsatí ran as number 3 on the list of Junts i Lliures per Europa for the elections to the European Parliament, headed by President Puigdemont.

[21] Within the European Parliament, Clara Ponsatí is a member of the Committee on Industry, Technology, Research and Energy and of the Sub-Committee on Fiscal Affairs.

[23] In the course of her parliamentary term, Clara Ponsatí and her team created the website ‘ruleoflaw.cat’, that consists of a database on the violations of the rights of the Catalans from 2003 to present time.

[27] On 19 July, Judge Pablo Llarena withdrew the European Arrest Warrant against Ponsatí and against the rest of the exiles in Belgium and Switzerland after the German court of Schleswig-Holstein denied the surrender of President Puigdemont to Spain for the crime of rebellion.

[28] On 5 November 2019, Judge Llarena issued a new European Arrest Warrant to the United Kingdom against Clara Ponsatí based on the crime of sedition,[29] Initially, the UK police refused to process the European Arrest Warrant as it was deemed "disproportionate" under British law and it was requested that, in order to re-assess the decision, more information had to be provided.

This created a diplomatic conflict and the United Kingdom eventually issued another document to state that deeming the warrant disproportionate had been a mistake.

After judge Llarena sent the additional information requested by the British authorities, the United Kingdom agreed to process the European Arrest Warrant.

Around six, while she was on her way to the Oficina Europarlamentària of Junts i Lliures per Europa in the Born, she was arrested by the Mossos d'Esquadra in the 'Plaça de la Catedral', in spite of the interim parliamentary immunity she enjoyed, as granted by the vice-president of the Court of Justice on 24 May 2022.

[41] On the same day, Ponsatí's defence team filed an habeas corpus against the arrest, alleging that it had been illegal due to the provisional immunity she enjoyed.