The Supreme Court amnesties Junqueras, Turull, Bassa and Romeva and lifts their disqualification

MadridTwo years and four months after it came into force, the amnesty has fully reached those convicted of embezzlement in the 'Procés' trial. The Supreme Court, led by Manuel Marchena, has applied the law to four members of the 1-O Government who were disqualified until 2030 and 2031: Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Turull, Dolors Bassa, and Raül Romeva. In this way, they regain all political rights and will be able to run for elections again, hold public office, or, for example, return to teaching at the university. The final green light for the pardon comes just over seven years after the Supreme Court's sentence and five years after they left prison thanks to the pardons. The decision, taken reluctantly and entering into a dialectical battle with the Constitutional Court, is the penultimate intervention by Manuel Marchena in the judicial persecution of the October 1st referendum. His final dance will be the application of the total amnesty to Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín, and Lluís Puig, who are still waiting. Before that, Pablo Llarena will need to conclude the summary, a final step that he will take in the coming days.

The Supreme Court's decision to amnesty the four former ministers comes exactly two weeks after the Constitutional Court resolved the appeal for constitutional protection presented by Dolors Bassa and ordered the high court to amnesty the embezzlement. “The outcome of the appeal for protection can have no other effect than the definitive filing,” admits the eleven-page interlocutory order. “We assume in its entirety the operative part of the sentence,” it adds with resignation. The fact is that Manuel Marchena is very harsh with the Constitutional Court, both regarding the text of the sentence, which he presents as a “resolution subscribed to by seven magistrates” –those of a progressive bent–, and regarding its role in correcting the Supreme Court's decisions. Although he denies wanting to enter into an “institutional clash,” he does not spare reproaches and sends a battery of poisoned darts against what he believes are “superfluous epithets” and “manifestly dispensable and absolutely unnecessary considerations”.

“The unnecessary grandiloquence of the terms reveals the desire to adorn a reasoning that invades the jurisdictional sphere belonging to the Supreme Court with expressions meant to camouflage the intensity of the interference,” argues the judge who presided over the Procés trial. What is he complaining about? He protests because the Constitutional Court's ruling reprimanded the Supreme Court for having made an “extensive and unpredictable interpretation” of the amnesty, distancing itself from “common sense” and “logic” and basing itself on a “drastic contradiction” and a “teleological reduction”.

Likewise, he forcefully attacks the Constitutional Court’s decisions, which he considers “have widened to unprecedented limits in its own history” the space that the Magna Carta reserves for constitutional guarantees: “The mutation into a final instance with the capacity to review the interpretation of any legal norm is blurring the design that the 1978 constituents intended,” he laments. He also recalls that there are fourteen magistrates –five conservatives from the Constitutional Court, who issued a dissenting opinion, and nine Supreme Court judges– who “have defended” the same interpretation of the amnesty and who are also victims of the “disqualification” by the Constitutional Court: “The significant number of magistrates who have expressed their agreement with the thesis makes it very difficult to naturally accept the irrationality attributed to the appealed decision,” replies Manuel Marchena.

On the other hand, after having spent two years refusing to make a move, the Supreme Court acknowledges that it is “obvious” that among the effects of the extinction of criminal liability derived from the amnesty is the elimination of criminal records. However, this “requires an administrative resolution” from the Ministry of Justice. Therefore, the high court will notify the department headed by Félix Bolaños so that it can act. This will also allow for the erasure of the records of Carme Forcadell, Josep Rull, Joaquim Forn, and Meritxell Borràs.

The Government and the Moncloa celebrate the decision

A few minutes after the news became known, the spokesperson for the Government of the Generalitat, Sílvia Paneque, expressed the “celebration, joy and satisfaction” of the Catalan executive regarding the Supreme Court's decision: “For the beneficiaries and, above all, because this law was conceived for the benefit of all of Catalonia, in terms of cohesion, reconciliation and starting a stage of normalization in political and social terms,” she summarized. From Madrid, the spokesperson for the Spanish government, Elma Saiz, also celebrated the application of the amnesty “in its entirety” and boasted that it means “more coexistence”.

The independence movement also claims victory. "Finally, justice has been done where there was only injustice. Ambition. Country. Future," wrote Junqueras in a message on X. The republican leader will appear this afternoon alongside Romeva and Bassa at the party headquarters. “Dragging their feet, late and grumbling, but the Supreme Court has no choice but to sign the capitulation,” wrote Carles Puigdemont on X. The secretary general of Junts, Jordi Turull, boasted of a “new victory” for the independence movement: “An amnesty that we forced to manage to demonstrate that voting for the independence of Catalonia is not and can never be a crime”.

The four convicted

Oriol Junqueras aspires to be the ERC candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat in 2028. The current republican leader was unable to run in the February 12, 2024 elections and has also not been able to return to being a History professor at the Autonomous University. Raül Romeva, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs, had to resign from chairing the Irla Foundation, linked to ERC, due to doubts about his disqualification.

In contrast, Jordi Turull has been able to serve as secretary general of Junts since June 2022, even though he has not been able to run in the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia. Dolors Bassa resigned from her parliamentary seat in March 2018, just before returning to prison, and has not returned to institutional politics. In fact, she learned the verdict of the Constitutional Court while traveling in Senegal with a friend.