Puigdemont's entourage leans towards him returning after the elections

Barcelona / MadridFollowing the Constitutional Court's (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 of exile, wavers between imminence and waiting for the right political moment, and right now it is unknown whether he will make it coincide with the general election campaign on 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 government's circle have publicly expressed that Puigdemont should return after the elections. A different view from the Spanish government, which reminds him 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 SER. "It is a decision that is up to him," he added. For the moment, the Government has indeed granted Puigdemont's request for the office he holds as former president, which was located at Palau Centelles in Barcelona, to be moved to premises on Carrer Dr. Roux, 51-63, which are owned by the Generalitat, as reported by El País and confirmed by ARA.

From Puigdemont's circle, the lawyer for the Junts leader, Gonzalo Boye, and the vice president of the ANC, Lluís Llach, argue that his return should take place outside of the electoral contest, while the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, has said it must go beyond any election. "The move of the president in exile returning now is a political trap that must be dodged," said Llach on X. "Even though I am not a voter of his, I hope Junts acts with patriotic intelligence," he added. In the same vein, Boye expressed his opinion on 3Cat 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 of 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 an opening 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, even though the pre-campaign is already on the agenda. In any case, if that is not the case, the return would take place around the Christmas holidays, because what the Junts members consider most important, whatever the tempo, is that the institutional nature of the return is safeguarded. Furthermore, there is no desire to interfere in the campaign, in which Junts has full confidence placed in its leader in Madrid, Miriam Nogueras.

In his 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 he will at least wait for the case against him to be archived, which could take several weeks. Early in the morning, the Constitutional Court officially communicated its ruling to the Supreme Court, in which it orders the high court to "urgently" apply the amnesty to embezzlement.

The ball is in the Supreme Court's court

Now it is Pablo Llarena who must issue the closing order for the case summary. Before doing so, he has given the parties—the defenses, the Prosecutor's Office, the State Attorney's Office, and Vox—five days to state their positions. On Tuesday, less than an hour after the Constitutional Court's verdict, he lifted the arrest warrants, but he did so on a “provisional” basis and with a “strictly transitory character” while he waited for and studied the content of the ruling. Therefore, it is a decision he will have to confirm after receiving the pronouncements from the parties.

The expectation is that at that same moment he will send the case to the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court, presided over by Andrés Martínez-Arrieta and of which Manuel Marchena is also a member, so that they may be the ones who, after giving the parties another five days, order the shelving of the investigation. This pushes the calendar to the last week of October, coinciding with the ninth anniversary of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence. It is an outcome that they already take for granted at the Moncloa. "There was a part of the judiciary that expressed itself against the amnesty law. [...] From there, 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 those convicted or wait for the rulings on the appeals for legal protection (recursos d'empara) of Jordi Turull, Oriol Junqueras, and Raül Romeva to arrive individually. Mind you, first he had to give the parties a five-day period to state their positions. Reliable sources from the Supreme Court consulted by ARA make it clear that the disqualification penalty, at least that of the former Minister of Labor, Social Affairs and Families, "will certainly be lifted" before Monday, October 26, which is the deadline for submitting candidacies for the 29-N elections. Hours after the Supreme Court's resolution, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, Lluís Puig's lawyer, asked the Supreme Court to apply the amnesty "immediately" in view of the "forcefulness" of the Constitutional Court's ruling.

In this morning's interview, Minister Bolaños boasted about the effects that, in his opinion, 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. "The normalization is absolute," he went on to say, and he referred to the latest CIS barometer, which points out 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.