Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena is now refusing to amnesty Carles Puigdemont until the Constitutional Court orders him to do so, because he finds that the—devastating—ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union must not have enough consistency for a patriotic judge like him. Clad in the role of Don Tancredo, Llarena digs in and says that the CJEU ruling does not serve as a legal basis to amnesty Puigdemont, given that he considers the Supreme Court's interpretation of embezzlement has not been reviewed. The answer comes by itself: then let them review it. Above all, because the idea of “embezzlement” that was wielded to convict the leaders of the Procés was another display of judicial inventiveness on a par with the accusation of rebellion, which ended up being discarded. Not the embezzlement, because they needed charges to add years of prison time. But the inconsistency of the accusation was the same.Llarena's reasons for not granting amnesty to Puigdemont also have no basis. Not only that, but they are very close to being prevarication, given his insistence on disobeying not only the amnesty law, but also a ruling from a high European court which, as a judge practicing within an EU member state, he has the obligation to abide by, comply with, and enforce. However, it is understood that Llarena's response is not addressed to legal experts, nor even to citizens with a minimum of critical spirit, but to the media outlets that applaud demonstrations of bullfighter pride. It is as if Llarena were saying that, if he has to drink the hemlock of having to amnesty an enemy of Spain, he will not do so unless at least a Spanish court orders him to (even if it is a court, the Constitutional Court, which the ever-equanimous Esteban González Pons defined two years ago as “the cancer of the rule of law,” despite the use and abuse the Popular Party made of it when it held a majority there). Llarena does not care that he has repeatedly made a fool of himself before the European justice system with his international arrest warrants against Puigdemont: he has seen that it does not work, but his reaction is to maintain the arrest warrant within the territory of the Spanish state: if Puigdemont sets foot there, he will be automatically arrested, a scene that has been the judge's wet dream for nine years. To save Spain, naturally.The fact is serious, but it seems anecdotal because in these years we have seen the Spanish justice system commit so many absurdities, and of such magnitude, that this stubbornness of Llarena seems like little in comparison. It serves as a reminder, in any case, that the CJEU ruling not only represents an endorsement of the amnesty law (which dismantled the entire rule of law in Spain, according to the right and the far-right), but also exposed, to the point of scandal, the televised shame that the Procés trial was. And it also reminds us that the judiciary, reconverted into a political weapon of conservative ultra-nationalism, remains the most serious problem of the many that Spanish democracy has.
