Laura Díez (Barcelona, 1969) is a professor of constitutional law at the University of Barcelona and has been a member of the Constitutional Court since 2023. She speaks to ARA following a key decision regarding the amparo appeal of former minister Dolors Bassa, which is expected to trigger the full application of the amnesty by the Supreme Court.

Today marks 86 years since President Lluís Companys was executed by the Spanish army at Montjuïc Castle, in Barcelona.

For days now, Carles Puigdemont's inner circle has been leaning towards the idea that, despite the judicial endorsement of the amnesty and the lifting of the arrest warrant against him, the former president should not return to Catalonia until after the November 29th elections. This was indicated by various voices in ARA, and this Tuesday the lawyer for the Junts leader, Gonzalo Boye, was clear on this point: "He will not return in the middle of the election campaign, which is what the PSOE would want," he said in statements to Catalunya Ràdio.

Toni Comín avoids setting a date for his return to Catalonia, but assures that there is "a certain urgency" so that he can collect his MEP certificate – for which he must swear the Constitution at the Congress – and start exercising as a representative of Junts in the European Parliament. In the first public appearance he makes after the application of the amnesty to the pro-independence leaders, the elected MEP has celebrated what he considers "a great political victory for the independence movement and for all democrats". He has said that the Spanish state has "had to admit they were right", but has warned that the amnesty "is not the final victory": "We want many more", he added.

The total amnesty for the leaders and those prosecuted in the 'Procés' is excellent news that puts an end, not certainly to the political conflict between Catalonia and Spain, but to one of the darkest episodes in the current Spanish democratic era. The amnesty is for those who have suffered judicial, police, political, and media persecution for nine years, but it is above all an amnesty that the Spanish state grants to itself, after its powers have incurred the crime of crimes against democracy by persecuting citizens for ideological reasons. Beating citizens on public roads, imprisoning civic and political leaders, or forcing them into exile, criminalizing ideas, is incompatible with democracy and, nevertheless, it is exactly what happened in the Spanish state in 2017 and thereafter. If there was a coup d'état in Spain, it was, as has been said and repeated, the one that began in 2010 with the Constitutional Court's ruling against the Statute and extended until this past Monday, when finally the stage of political repression against the Catalan independence movement could be considered closed. A coup d'état carried out from the State and by servants of the State, at all levels of power: from the police to the monarchy, passing through the judges and prosecutors (Llarenas, Marchenas, Lamelas, Zaragozas, Madrigals) who have taken an active part in a long and unfortunate history of lawfare or dirty judicial war, naturally passing also through all the political leaders who in some way have promoted or given cover to the absurdity. The Spanish state has gambled its democratic credibility, already in itself quite inconsistent, and reached the point of descending to the category of flawed democracy (instead of the one for full democracy, where it is usually found) in the year 2021 in the Democracy Index of The Economist. That those responsible for all this now emerge with complete impunity is nothing short of unjust, and gives an effectively melancholy varnish to the moment the amnesty is applied.

The Constitutional Court resolved favorably on Tuesday the first of the appeals for protection against the non-application of the amnesty law, that of former minister Dolors Bassa, arguing that the Supreme Court interpreted it in an “extensive way contrary to the spirit and purpose of the law.” This has led it to annul the interlocutory orders of July 1 and September 1, 2024, by which the Supreme Court repeatedly refused to comply with the law. The ruling is not clear, however, as these annulled resolutions not only affected Bassa but also Junqueras, Turull, and Romeva. In view of this, once the ruling is notified, the Supreme Court can do several things: hurry to study it—as judge Pablo Llarena has announced he will do—and apply it imminently to Bassa, to the four aforementioned people, or to all of them; wait for it to be published in the Official State Gazette and decide, or even wait for all pending appeals to be resolved. Before that, however, Llarena, the instructor of the exiles' case, had to leave the precautionary measures without effect and lift the national arrest warrants, even if with a weak argument and saying that he does so provisionally while waiting to examine the ruling.

The fleeting appearance of Carles Puigdemont in Barcelona on August 8, 2024, during Salvador Illa's investiture, has not been the only visit by the exiles to Catalonia in recent years. Despite the arrest warrant that hung over them, and which has now been lifted by judge Pablo Llarena, the former minister Lluís Puig also dared to step on Catalan soil on several occasions. He revealed this on Wednesday in an interview with RAC1, in which he assured that in the last 9 years he has visited "lands of the Ripollès, the Garrotxa, and the Empordà, but discreetly".

It has rained a lot these days, and guess which service went down this morning: Rodalies. Obviously, when I say that Rodalies is not working, I mean that even what usually functions is not working. The rains caused a slope to collapse, and the train drivers' union refused to work today for safety reasons. And since the Government, Renfe, and Adif fail every day to inform passengers, this morning thousands of users found themselves without trains and, in many cases, without a reinforcement bus service. All the screens at Sants said was that there was no service "due to external causes" (which were the train drivers).

Following 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.

This Tuesday has been a very important day in the fight to erase the effects of the judicial repression that was set in motion the very day after October 1st against political leaders and anonymous citizens for defending Catalonia's right to self-determination. The decision of the Constitutional Court, which has finally ordered the Supreme Court to apply the amnesty also to those accused of the crime of embezzlement, opens the door to the return of Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín, and Lluís Puig, and to nullify the disqualification from public office suffered by Oriol Junqueras, Dolors Bassa, Jordi Turull, and Raül Romeva. It will be the end of a process that has lasted many years: one that began with pardons, continued with the repeal of the crime of sedition, and has finally culminated in the total application of an amnesty that the judiciary has tried to torpedo by all means.

On November 4, 2019, just three weeks after the Supreme Court had sentenced us for the October 1st referendum, the election campaign for the Spanish general election on November 10 began. It was the second call to the polls in a few months, following the failure of the investiture after the April 28 elections. That day, at an Esquerra Republicana political event at the former Model prison in Barcelona, together with the head of the list Gabriel Rufián, we demanded the approval of an amnesty law.

The Constitutional Court plans to approve today the ruling by which it will order the Supreme Court to apply the amnesty once and for all. After this ruling, it will be necessary to wait for the Supreme Court to archive the case and for Judge Llarena to annul the arrest warrant for Puigdemont, Puig, and Comín so that they can return to Catalonia without the risk of being arrested.

Steps forward for the amnesty law, even though two years later it has still not benefited four out of every ten prosecuted independence supporters. If in the month of June the rule had stalled at half, in recent weeks –after the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)– things are accelerating, according to data collected by Alerta Solidària. Specifically, 62% of independence supporters have already been amnestied, although, curiously, the list still does not include either the thirty people prosecuted at the Court of Auditors or the twelve members of the CDR accused of terrorism, the two cases in which the CJEU explicitly validated the measure of grace. Next week it is expected that the Constitutional Court (TC) will also take a decisive step so that Carles Puigdemont and the ministers of his Government pursued for embezzlement are amnestied.

With Carles Puigdemont's return closer than ever, one of the questions still hovering over this scenario is which text from the Constitutional Court will open the door for the former president of the Generalitat to enter the State. The countdown is already underway for the TC to press the button so that the Supreme Court must rectify and apply the total amnesty to the independence leaders –that is, to also apply it to the crime of embezzlement–, and it has a key date marked on the calendar. Tuesday, October 6. That day, two proposals from two magistrates from opposing blocs will arrive at the plenary session of the Constitutional Court, which will propose applying this amnesty. One, from the president of the TC, the progressive Cándido Conde-Pumpido, which is the one most likely to be chosen, and another from the conservative magistrate José María Macías, with fewer options, but which will also be debated in the plenary session.This Thursday, the draft that Macías will bring to this meeting has emerged; he is the one in charge of drafting the proposed ruling on the appeal by Junts member Jordi Turull. Macías presented a first version that rejected this total amnesty, but the progressive majority struck it down this week and Macías has created a new version that advocates for applying it, even though it goes against his own judgment, which he will express by filing a dissenting opinion that will indeed reflect his personal view. "Having what one did not have implies a benefit", argued the conservative rapporteur initially, in a resolution that defended that the Supreme Court's decision not to amnesty embezzlement is not "the result of alleged animosity".

As we already told you yesterday, the Constitutional Court endorsed the amnesty law. Although the magistrates' deliberations are secret, it has been an open secret (as almost always happens in the Spanish judicial corridors): the progressive majority opposed the proposal of a conservative magistrate who was against it, and now the forecast is that in the week of October 5th, the TC will end up giving the green light to the amnesty. And it would be then that Judge Llarena would have to lift the arrest warrant for Puigdemont, Comín and Puig, and the Supreme Court would have to definitively archive all the cases related to the 'Procés' that it still keeps open. A very bitter medicine for an application of justice that is arrogant and proud.When would Puigdemont return?The ARA delegate in Madrid, Núria Orriols, specifies that the president in exile could choose between three moments to return: once the Constitutional Court has decided, after the withdrawal of Llarena's arrest warrant, or once the case has been definitively shelved. You can be sure that after spending 9 years in Belgium, it won't make a difference to Puigdemont if it takes a day or a month more, and that he will not return until it is clear that they will not arrest him. Another thing is that, once here, some random Peinado-style judge might find a traffic fine he didn't pay or revive the Aigües de Girona case. But beyond the criminal situation, there is the political one. And Puigdemont must decide what he wants to do: whether to go to Parliament to act as leader of the opposition, whether to run again or not, and in turn, Junts will have to see if it is capable of covering, from what was once Convergència, with its connection to big business, the entire independence movement beyond the size of its pocket.Meanwhile, yesterday the Mossos superintendent, Carles Hernández, head of the General Information Commissariat, the police branch on which that unfortunate infiltration of two agents into a teachers' assembly depended, appeared before the Parliament of Catalonia.

To no one's surprise, Begoña Gómez, the wife of the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been sent to trial for embezzlement and influence peddling.It is the news of the day and, at the same time, it was already taken for granted. You know what happens when the episodes of a series are coming to an end, when the writers drown the protagonists with an accumulation of problems? Well, here we are: the Spanish legislature has months left, and Aznar's watchword of “Whoever can do, let them do” is working at full speed. Note that the judge who is sending Sánchez's wife to trial, the judge Juan Carlos Peinado, is retiring next week. He is leaving through the front door, with a big game trophy. Because one thing is that Begoña Gómez has to answer to the law like everyone else, but not everyone is answering to the law in the same way. Carlos Mazón, with hundreds of deaths on his conscience, continues to collect a deputy's salary. It would be touching if it were not pathetic to hear yesterday on TVE a minister of Sánchez, Óscar López, acknowledging that at the beginning of the 'Procés', he did not understand what was happening, and that now he understands everything.

Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena now refuses to amnesty Carles Puigdemont until the Constitutional Court orders him to do so, because he finds that the —devastating— ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union must not have enough consistency for a patriotic judge like him. Clad as Don Tancredo, Llarena digs in his heels and says that the CJEU ruling does not serve as a legal basis to amnesty Puigdemont, given that he considers the Supreme Court's interpretation of embezzlement has not been reviewed. The answer comes by itself: then let them review it. Above all, because the idea of “embezzlement” that was wielded to convict the leaders of the Procés was a new display of judicial inventiveness on a par with the accusation of rebellion, which ended up being dismissed. Embezzlement was not, because they needed charges to add years of prison. But the inconsistency of the accusation was the same.Llarena's reasons for not granting amnesty to Puigdemont also hold no water. Not only that, but they must be very close to prevarication, given his insistence on disobeying not only the amnesty law, but also a ruling from a high European court which, as a judge practicing within an EU member state, he has the obligation to abide by, comply with, and enforce. However, it is understood that Llarena's response is not addressed to legal experts, nor even to citizens with a minimum of critical spirit, but to the media outlets that applaud demonstrations of bullfighting pride. It is as if Llarena were saying that, faced with the hemlock of having to amnesty an enemy of Spain, he will not do so unless at least a Spanish court orders him to (even if it is a court, the Constitutional Court, which the ever-equanimous Esteban González Pons defined two years ago as “the cancer of the rule of law,” despite the use and abuse the Popular Party made of it when it held a majority). Llarena does not care that he has repeatedly made a fool of himself before European justice with his international arrest warrants against Puigdemont. He has seen that it does not work, but his reaction is to maintain the arrest warrant within the territory of the Spanish state: if Puigdemont sets foot there, he will be automatically arrested, a scene that has been the judge's wet dream for nine years. To save Spain, naturally.The fact is serious, but it seems anecdotal because in these years we have seen the Spanish justice system commit so many absurdities, and of such magnitude, that this stubbornness of Llarena seems like little in comparison. It serves as a reminder, in any case, of the fact that the CJEU ruling not only represents an endorsement of the amnesty law (which dismantled the entire rule of law in Spain, according to the right and the extreme right), but also exposed, to the point of scandal, the televised shame that was the Procés trial. And it also reminds us that the judiciary, converted into a political weapon of conservative ultranationalism, remains the most serious problem of the many that Spanish democracy has.

Is it possible that the same Supreme Court judges who have delayed the implementation deadlines of the amnesty law as much as they could will soon agree to it, seeing the more than likely decision of the Constitutional Court, with its considered “progressive majority”?I have asked two of the directly affected politicians. To give you an idea of the level of skepticism, one replied: “We should expect nothing from the Supreme Court, and for the court to end up revoking its own decisions, the Constitutional Court would have to be very forceful in its ruling, and it is not so clear that it will be that way”. And the other was more ironic: “For some time now, I have been playing Saint Thomas, and if I don’t see it, I don’t believe it”.The level of political speculation about the possibility that the amnesty is approaching is endless, and there are reasons aplenty. One of the most widespread is that prison and the nine years of disqualifications and exile have already been a considerable punishment and (this is the good one) that if the judges lift the arrest warrant for Puigdemont and the president in exile crosses the border, the main one harmed would be Pedro Sánchez (“Traitor!”) and it would facilitate Feijóo’s post-election siren calls to Junts. There are also those who are sure that once Puigdemont is in Catalonia, the justice system will seek to prosecute him for some other deed.Nothing is known about Puigdemont's plans because, tired of leaks, he has self-imposed a silenzio stampa. For those who think that, in any case, it is already a page turned, perhaps they should consider that in such a volatile situation everything that happens will have importance. The good note of the independence movement in this National Day is a detail to keep in mind. And how the Government gets out of the management it has stalled, too.

The final stretch of the legislature will surely have more interest than one might have thought months ago, especially for Catalonia and Catalan politics. Obviously, Pedro Sánchez's government will suffer because it is very unlikely that it will manage to approve the budget bill it has again committed to presenting this year. And surely the Ceuta crisis still has a long way to go. But there is another goal that could be achieved during the coming weeks. It concerns the application of the amnesty law to Puigdemont and the other members of his executive who are awaiting the rulings that the Constitutional Court must issue on this matter. It is certainly true that the Supreme Court would never have applied the amnesty law on its own to the leader of Junts, but in this final stretch of the legislature there is a concatenation of circumstances that make what had until now been impossible seem plausible.

Now it's for real: countdown for the amnesty for the leaders of the 'Procés'. Or that is what was felt this Thursday in the corridors of the opening of the judicial year at the Supreme Court. According to sources familiar with the high court who spoke to ARA, the application of the law to the 1-O Government, including former president Carles Puigdemont, could be triggered after the resolution of the first amparo appeal by the Constitutional Court, without needing to wait for them to be resolved individually one by one. The same voices argue that the first pronouncement “would generate a doctrine” that could extend to the rest of the cases. It is, precisely, the same thing that the president of the TC defended, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, a few days ago in an interview. That is to say, although Carles Puigdemont's case will not be the first one the TC addresses, the arrest warrant against him could be lifted when the Constitutional Court rules on the appeal of former minister Jordi Turull, which is the lead case and, in principle, will be the first to have a ruling, which all sources assume will be favorable. It would arrive in the month of October and would drag the rest along.