The 10 judicial victories of Puigdemont from exile
A review of eight years of European resolutions that have paralyzed Llarena's European arrest warrants and defined the status of the former president
Barcelona“This will all end up in international courts,” predicted the then-President of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, in November 2017. For now, the amnesty – which at the time could not even be imagined – has already passed the validation of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and it is not the first setback that European justice has dealt to the Spanish Supreme Court. From exile, Puigdemont's defense has chained a series of favorable rulings across the continent. A series of victories that, for now, have not served him to return to Catalonia without the risk of being arrested.
The ex-president's first triumph came in December 2017 in Belgium. The Audiencia Nacional had issued the first European arrest warrant against him and the councilors, but the investigating judge of the Supreme Court – the court to which the trial of the 'Procés' was transferred – Pablo Llarena, withdrew it before Belgian justice ruled on December 14. He did so when it became known that Belgium would not extradite him for rebellion or sedition – offenses not homologable there – but possibly only for embezzlement.
This same dynamic was repeated in Germany between April and July 2018, but this time with a judicial ruling in between. After Puigdemont was arrested a few meters from the border with Denmark, returning from a trip to Finland, the Schleswig-Holstein Higher Court firmly dismissed extradition for rebellion arguing that it was not equivalent to the crime of high treason and disturbance of public order included in the German Penal Code. The court released Puigdemont and only left open the surrender for embezzlement, a route that Llarena dismissed by withdrawing the European arrest warrants again.
Another key moment was on December 19, 2019, with the arrival of the Junqueras doctrine. In the case of the Republican leader, who had become a Member of the European Parliament in July 2019, the ECJ ruled that parliamentary immunity is acquired from the exact moment of the proclamation of the results of the European electionsthat parliamentary immunity is acquired from the exact moment of the proclamation of the results of the European elections. This dismantled the Spanish state's requirement to acquire this status at the time of swearing the Constitution in Madrid, and forced the Eurochamber to grant the credentials and immunity to Puigdemont and Toni Comín. The next day, December 20, an order for interim measures from the ECJ annulled the prior refusal of the General Court (GCEU), allowed the three MEPs to access the European Parliament, and processed their credentials. The institutional shield worked perfectly: in January 2020, the Belgian justice system suspended the European arrest warrant explicitly invoking this immunity.
In October 2021, another milestone was added, this time in Italy. He was arrested in Alghero and detained in Sassari. The Italian court quickly released the former president and halted the extradition while waiting for Europe to resolve the pending issues in the European courts regarding the immunity of Puigdemont and former councilors Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí. Subsequently, in May 2022, European justice decided to provisionally restore immunity to the three MEPs, after the GCEU had withdrawn it in November 2021.
Another key victory occurred in January 2023. The ECJ, in response to preliminary questions from Llarena attempting to force Belgium to extradite the pro-independence leaders, established that the Belgian court could deny an extradition if it could "precisely" demonstrate that there was a risk of violation of fundamental rights or if it was proven that the person sought belonged to an "objectively identifiable group" without a guarantee of effective judicial protection in Spain"objectively identifiable group" without a guarantee of effective judicial protection in Spain. A few months later, in May 2023, the UN Human Rights Committee condemned the Spanish state for having suspended Puigdemont as a deputy in 2018, considering it an exceptional measure without reasonable or objective grounds.
As the most recent victory, in February 2026, the CJEU dealt a blow to the European Parliament when it definitively annulled the decision to remove immunity from Puigdemont, Comín, and Ponsatí. when it definitively annulled the decision to remove immunity from Puigdemont, Comín, and Ponsatí. The highest instance in Luxembourg concluded that the process was not impartial, directly pointing to the rapporteur of the requests for the lifting of immunity, the far-right Bulgarian Angel Dzhambazki.
Victories in the cases of Lluís Puig and Ponsatí
This judicial umbrella has also been applied to other exiles. In January 2021, the Brussels Court of Appeal denied the extradition of former minister Lluís Puig arguing that the Spanish Supreme Court was not competent to claim him and that there was a serious risk of violation of the right to the presumption of innocence in Spain. For its part, in Scotland, judge Nigel Ross ruled that the court had no jurisdiction to extradite Clara Ponsatí, as she had already settled in Belgium, rendering the judicial requests null and void.
International judicial setbacks
However, the trajectory has not been without setbacks. In May 2019, the European Court of Human Rights rejected the appeal of Carme Forcadell and various politicians against the Constitutional Court's decision to suspend the plenary session of October 9, 2017. In Luxembourg, the TGUE rejected restoring immunity to MEPs in November 2021 and, with an even harder blow in July 2023, they fully withdrew it, opening the door to new European arrest warrants. Later, in September 2024, the CJEU dismissed Puigdemont's appeal, asserting that the European Parliament had to limit itself to accepting the list from the Spanish Electoral Board, leaving Comín's seat up in the air. Finally, in April 2025, the Belgian Supreme Court definitively dismissed the lawsuit against judge Pablo Llarena that the exiles had filed for alleged violation of the presumption of innocence. All while the independence movement is waiting to know what will be the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights about the convictions of the Procés.
