Spain’s Supreme Court, the country’s highest judicial body, has refused to grant amnesty to pro-independence leader Carles Puigdemont, who has been in exile since Catalonia’s failed secession attempt in 2017, and has upheld the arrest warrant against him.
Pablo LLaena played him “issued a ruling today (Monday) in which it declared the amnesty not applicable to the crime of embezzlement in the case against the former president of the Catalan Generalitat Carles Puigdemont”the court said in its decision, made public on Monday, specifying that the arrest warrant against him therefore remained in force. This decision can be appealed within three days of notification to the parties, the document specifies.
On May 30, the Spanish parliament passed an amnesty law for Catalan separatists, the price that Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had to pay to be returned to power in November thanks to the support of the two Catalan separatist parties, which demanded the measure in return. The law was signed into law on June 11. The lawmakers’ goal was for the courts to begin canceling arrest warrants for separatists who fled abroad without delay, and for those cancellations to stand pending the review of appeals against the law, a process that can take months or years. But with more than 400 people prosecuted or convicted for crimes related to Catalonia’s 2017 independence bid or the events that preceded or followed it, the task is daunting for the courts, which must decide on a case-by-case basis.
The arrest warrant against Puigdemont “maintained only for embezzlement”
The law was intended to allow the return of the pro-independence activists still in exile, first and foremost Carles Puigdemont, president of the Catalan regional government during the events of 2017, who has since been living in exile in Belgium to escape prosecution. Charged with embezzlement, disobedience and terrorism, Mr Puigdemont, who has been the subject of an arrest warrant since the events of 2017, hoped to be able to return to Spain quickly after the law was promulgated.
Judge LLarena considered that the amnesty law did apply to the offense of disobedience, but that on the other hand, “behaviors” accused Mr Puigdemont and two other independentists “fully correspond to the two exceptions provided for by law” regarding the offense of embezzlement. Concretely, the magistrate concluded that there was a desire on the part of Mr. Puigdemont to obtain a personal benefit, as well as an impact on the financial interests of the European Union, which makes the amnesty inapplicable to their eyes. Consequently, the judgment principal “is maintained only for the offense of embezzlement, not for that of disobedience“, according to the document. The offense of terrorism with which Mr. Puigdemont is also accused in a separate case is not addressed in this judgment.
