Judge Llarena lifts the arrest warrant for Puigdemont after the Constitutional [Court] ruling

Madrid3,263 days after leaving for Belgium, Carles Puigdemont has a clear path to return to Catalonia. He will be able to put an end to nearly nine years of exile because the Constitutional Court has ordered the Supreme Court to apply the amnesty law to the leaders of the 1-O in a “preferential and urgent” manner and because, once the decision became known, Judge Pablo Llarena took less than an hour to make a move to lift the arrest warrants for the Junts leader, Toni Comín, and Lluís Puig. The progressive majority of the Constitutional Court imposed its criteria to include a direct and explicit order to the Supreme Court: “Retract the proceedings so that a new pronouncement is made in which the crime of embezzlement is declared amnestied,” the ruling states. It argues that pardoning embezzlement is “the only conclusion reconcilable” with the “rules of logic and common sense”.

The immediacy came as a surprise in Madrid. At 11:53 a.m., the plenary session of the TC approved – by seven votes in favor and five against – the ruling that upholds the appeal for protection (amparo) by Dolors Bassa and concludes that Manuel Marchena violated her rights to effective judicial protection, to access public functions and offices, and to criminal legality. It discredits the Supreme Court for having made an “internally contradictory” interpretation that is “opposed to the spirit and purpose” of the law. 47 minutes later, and still with the ruling unsigned, the high court announced that Pablo Llarena was lifting the arrest warrants he confirmed in July 2024 with a convoluted interpretation of embezzlement.

The judge recalls that the right to freedom is recognized in the Magna Carta and justifies that the Constitutional Court's decision “compels a weighing” of the new context: “The execution of the orders could cause a deprivation of liberty that the examination of the rulings might reveal to be improper, and the damage from which would not be eliminated by its subsequent lifting,” he alleges. Faced with this “risk,” Llarena considers it “proportionate” to leave the orders without effect “provisionally” and with a decision of a “strictly transitory nature.” Therefore, it is not an “anticipatory execution” or an “automatic extension” of the ruling, but rather he will need to sign off on the lifting of the precautionary measures once he has reviewed the full text of the ruling. He anticipates he will do so “without delay.” Subsequently, it will be the Criminal Chamber that must close the case and archive the cause definitively.

Finally, the proposal by Cándido Conde-Pumpido has prevailed. The lead report, regarding Turull, fell into the hands of the conservative José María Macías. His first draft opted to reject the appeal from the secretary general of Junts and side with the Supreme Court. After the progressive magistrates corrected him on September 22nd, he himself rewrote the draft, but he did not want to add the exhortation directed at the Supreme Court and ended up resigning from the report, which has remained in the hands of Pumpido.

Gonzalo Boye, Puigdemont's lawyer, has anticipated that the leader of Junts will return to Catalonia once the amnesty has been applied in an “integral manner”. Andreu Van den Eynde, lawyer for Oriol Junqueras and Raül Romeva, considers it “indispensable” that Marchena pronounces himself in a “very imminent” manner to avoid an “evident and irreparable injury” to the right to political participation and allows them, if they wish, to run in the 29-N elections. For his part, Toni Comín will be able to go to Madrid to collect his act as a Member of the European Parliament after the Central Electoral Board left his seat vacant in July 2024.

“He evaded the genuine meaning” of the amnesty

In July 2024, the Supreme Court closed the door on the amnesty alleging that the members of the 1-O Government enriched themselves because they did not pay for the referendum out of their own pockets: “Whoever squanders public funds that they must administer with loyalty and uses them to finance the Process obtains an unquestionable personal benefit”. Now the Constitutional Court reproaches it for deciding to “evade the genuine meaning” of the amnesty and argues that, far from its reading, the wording of the law “inexorably leads” to the understanding that only the “misappropriation of public funds carried out for purposes of personal corruption” is excluded, and not with the objective of making the 1-O possible.

The Constitutional Court's ruling comes three months after the verdict of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) endorsing the compatibility of the amnesty with European law. It was a filter that the TC was waiting for before issuing its sentence. After Luxembourg denied that the amnesty affects the financial interests of the EU, the Constitutional Court also delivers a blow to the Supreme Court's justification on this matter: “The contradiction is flagrant and insoluble and represents a failure of rationality irreconcilable with the guarantee that no one should be subjected to reasoning that manifestly presents a contradictory, unreasonable, and illogical character”, says the sentence.

In the appeal for protection (recurso de amparo) that she presented in November 2024, to which ARA has had access, Dolors Bassa argued that the interpretation the Supreme Court makes of the amnesty is “forced, extensive, and contrary to the defendant” and “directly attacks” the “spirit and purpose” of the norm, as well as the “logical and common sense of the terms used by the legislator, endangering legal certainty”. The sentence includes some of the concepts and expressions from the appeal of the former Minister of Labor, Social Affairs, and Families. “It ventures dangerously into the territory of the legislative function, because interpreting the law so broadly entails its practical repeal”, she asserted.