Puigdemont's entourage leans towards him returning after the elections

Barcelona / MadridAfter the Constitutional Court (TC) endorsement of the amnesty for the leaders of the 'Procés', all eyes are on former president Carles Puigdemont. His return to Catalonia, after nine years in exile, moves between imminence and waiting for the opportune political moment, and it is currently unknown whether he will make it coincide with the general election campaign of November 29th or not. Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena, however, has already lifted the arrest warrant that was against him, although several prominent figures from the former head of the Government's entourage have publicly expressed that Puigdemont should return after the elections. A different opinion from the Spanish government, which reminds that he has the green light for an immediate return: "Puigdemont could return today if he wanted to," stated the Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños, this morning in statements to the SER. "It is a decision that is up to him," he added.

From Puigdemont's entourage, the lawyer for the Junts leader, Gonzalo Boye, and the vice president of the ANC, Lluís Llach, argue that the return should take place outside of the electoral contest, while the secretary general of Junts, Jordi Turull, has said that it must go beyond an election. "The move of having the president in exile return now is a political trap that must be dodged," said Llach on X. "Despite not being a voter of his, I hope that Junts acts with patriotic intelligence," he added. In the same vein, Boye expressed his opinion on 3Cat, stating that Puigdemont should avoid his return influencing the electoral campaign. "I believe the president is very clear that he must not confuse taking the temperature in the territories with doing so in the middle of an electoral campaign, that would be a mistake," he said. At the same time, Turull has avoided commenting on whether it should be before or after the elections, but he did want to point out that it must be the return "of the president of a country and not the president of a party." "This transcends an election," he said.

The truth is that today there are several scenarios that the former president could explore depending on when the Supreme Court definitively applies the penal oblivion. If it were more immediate, there would be a window for the return to be brought forward, since at this moment there are still about two months left until the elections and it would be quite far from the campaign stricto sensu, although the pre-campaign is already on the agenda. In any case, if that is not the case, the return would go to the doors of the Christmas holidays, because what the 'juntaires' consider most important, whatever the tempo, is that the institutionality of the return remains safeguarded. Furthermore, there is no desire to interfere in the campaign, in which Junts has its full confidence deposited in the leader in Madrid, Miriam Nogueras.

In the appearance this Tuesday after the Constitutional Court endorsed the amnesty, Puigdemont did not clarify when and how he plans to return. However, what was clear from the beginning, listening to his lawyer, is that at the very least he will wait for the case against him to be archived, which could take several weeks. For the moment, the Constitutional Court has already officially communicated its sentence to the Supreme Court, in which it orders the high court to apply the amnesty to embezzlement "urgently".

The ball, in the Supreme Court's court

Now it is Llarena who must issue the interlocutory order concluding the summary of the case and send it to the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court, presided over by Andrés Martínez-Arrieta, of which Manuel Marchena is also a member. And it will be them who, after hearing the parties – the defenses, the Public Prosecutor's Office, the State Attorney's Office, and Vox –, will order the dismissal of the investigation for the application of the amnesty to Puigdemont and the former ministers Toni Comín and Lluís Puig. An outcome that at the Moncloa they already take for granted. "There was a part of the judiciary that spoke out against the amnesty law [...]. From here on, the rule of law has worked. Time has put everything in its place," Bolaños has claimed.

Regarding the convicted former ministers, the ball is in Manuel Marchena's court. The judge who presided over the Procés trial will have to draft the resolution to apply the amnesty to Dolors Bassa and will have to decide whether to propose extending it to the rest of the convicted individuals or wait for the rulings on the amparo appeals of Jordi Turull, Oriol Junqueras, and Raül Romeva to arrive individually. Mind you, he has already given the parties a five-day deadline to express their views. Pablo Llarena, for his part, did not need the ruling on Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín, and Lluís Puig to lift his arrest warrants. Reliable sources from the Supreme Court consulted by ARA make it clear that the disqualification sentence, at least that of the former Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Families, "will certainly be lifted" before Monday, October 26, which is the deadline for submitting candidacies for November 29.

In this morning's interview, Minister Bolaños boasted about the effects that, in his view, the amnesty has had, which he insisted was not directed at any "person" in particular. According to him, thanks to "brave" and "highly contested" measures like this one, the Spanish government has achieved "normalization" in Catalonia after the turbulent years of the Procés. "Normalization is absolute," he went as far as to say, and referred to the latest CIS barometer, which indicates that only "0.2% of the population considers the potential independence of Catalonia to be a problem." "This problem no longer exists, and we have achieved it, the government of Pedro Sánchez," he said.