Will Carles Puigdemont be able to return to Catalonia during the month of October?

MadridSince the amnesty law was approved in the Congress of Deputies 846 days ago, there has been a question that conditions Catalan politics and Spanish politics: when will Carles Puigdemont return to Catalonia as a free man? The return of the Junts leader has been hovering over the legislature from the very first day, it has been a repeated demand of the independence supporters and has become a hope for the PSOE to rebuild alliances and complicity with Miriam Nogueras's party in Madrid. Now the Constitutional Court has set the machinery in motion so that –definitively– it may be possible.

And it did so 23 months after Jordi Turull went there to correct the Supreme Court's refusal to grant amnesty for embezzlement. It was on November 16, 2024, when the secretary general of Junts denounced that Manuel Marchena was making an “extravagant, unpredictable, and analogical” interpretation of the law to leave both him and Oriol Junqueras, Dolors Bassa, and Raül Romeva outside the perimeter of the penal oblivion norm so that they would remain disqualified until 2030 and 2031. What will the calendar be now?

After the progressive majority has prevailed, the next key date on the calendar will be Tuesday, October 6. That day, two new reports will be voted on: that of José María Macías, who will redo his initial proposal regarding Jordi Turull, and that of Cándido Conde-Pumpido –the president of the Constitutional Court, of a progressive nature– regarding Dolors Bassa. Conde-Pumpido's step forward is a maneuver that authorized voices from the Constitutional Court had not seen until now. It can be done, but it is never done. The reason for this movement is not clear: it could be that Conde-Pumpido does not fully trust the report that Macías must now draft or that he wants to promote a more forceful wording to stand up to the Supreme Court. The forecast is that the report on Turull will be voted on first and then the one on Bassa. It could be that one is the winner –predictably the one related to Bassa made by Conde-Pumpido– or that both are approved.

The ball is in the Supreme Court's court

Carles Puigdemont could return at two possible moments. The first way would be to return after Pablo Llarena revoked the arrest warrant –ex officio or at the request of the parties– which has been in force since judge Carmen Lamela of the National Court imposed it on November 3, 2017. The second option would be to wait until the trial chamber of the Procés definitively archived the case, a step that the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court would have to take subsequently and after giving the parties a few days to pronounce themselves.

For the moment, sources from Junts consulted by ARA want to be cautious and will wait to make a decision when there are firm resolutions and papers on the table. Just this weekend, Carles Puigdemont avoided giving details in an interview with the British newspaper The Sunday Times. Mind you, he verbalized the desire to want to perform an “immersion into the reality” of Catalonia to return to “breathe, touch, and listen” to the country. The leader of Junts foresees “two or three scenarios” regarding his first steps in case of return.

The engine of the Supreme Court

What will trigger the Supreme Court's button? Constitutional Court sources explain to ARA that a ruling like this is communicated “immediately” to the parties and to the Supreme Court and that, therefore, one “does not have to wait” for the verdict to be published in the Official State Gazette for it to have binding effects on those convicted. If Llarena were to do nothing, both Gonzalo Boye – Carles Puigdemont’s lawyer – and the case prosecutor could send him the ruling and urge him to take action.

In fact, rulings of this nature usually take a month to appear in the BOE. For example, the publication of the ruling on Quim Torra’s motion for amparo against his disqualification took 39 days; the one regarding Oriol Junqueras’s appeal against the JEC’s decision to withdraw his status as a Member of the European Parliament was published after 37 days, and the one regarding Jordi Turull’s appeal against the judgment of the Procés trial, after 27 days.

From Pablo Llarena’s circle, they anticipate that the investigating judge will need to read the entire ruling to make a decision, but they make it clear that his intention is to resolve the matter “as quickly as possible.” Subsequently, the publication of the ruling in the BOE could challenge the High Court of Justice of Catalonia and benefit, in turn, Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó, who remain waiting for the Court of Justice of the European Union to rule on their case.