The Supreme Court has agreed this Thursday to apply the amnesty to Clara Ponsatí. In an interlocutory order, the high court has extinguished the criminal liability of the former Minister of Education for the crime of disobedience for her role in the 1-O and has definitively closed the case. The decision has been a long time coming. The Supreme Court made its move more than a year after the Constitutional Court dismissed the question of unconstitutionality that the criminal chamber had presented and that had halted the processing of all cases. At the end of July, the Supreme Court began to turn on the amnesty tap and amnestied fourteen people who were waiting, but the case of Clara Ponsatí remained in hibernation. And now it has had its final resolution. The Supreme Court's amnesty also comes twenty days after the Court of Auditors, dragging its feet and after postponing it for weeks, applied the amnesty law to Ponsatí and about thirty former government officials for the expenses of the Procés.

Nine years later, Pablo Llarena lets go of the 'Procés' case and starts the countdown to full amnesty for Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín, and Lluís Puig. The investigating judge has taken the penultimate step needed to make this possible: he has revoked the indictment he issued in 2018, concluded the summary proceedings, and referred the case to the criminal chamber so that it is Manuel Marchena who orders the final dismissal of the case. In this way, the judicial persecution of the 1-O at the Supreme Court is closer to being buried.

Toni Comín has set foot in Catalonia again. He did so on Sunday, October 25th, past one in the afternoon, crossing on foot the Col dels Belitres, the administrative border with France, in a very symbolic and emotional act, accompanied by his closest friends and family. The former Minister of Health had already gone on Thursday to Madrid to swear the Constitution to obtain his seat as a Member of the European Parliament and, during the nine-year period of exile in Belgium, he had been to Northern Catalonia on a few occasions, but it was not until this Sunday that he officially entered the Principality, protected by the amnesty, without the risk of being arrested by the Spanish authorities.

From the Parliament, "the Minister of Culture was expelled from it illegitimately and with the approval of some parties present here" for the simple fact of "setting up the ballot boxes". This is how clearly Lluís Puig expressed himself, from the lectern of the hemicycle, upon his return to the seat of sovereignty of the Principality after nine years of exile, surrounded by the top leadership of the independence movement. A gesture such as removing the yellow ribbon from his seat and raising it as a sign of victory was the penultimate chapter in closing the stage of repression in Catalan politics. Only one ribbon remains on a seat, in a prominent position. It belongs to former President Carles Puigdemont, who is expected to return from exile after the Spanish elections, once the arrest warrants have been lifted and all that remains is for the amnesty to be definitively applied to him, just as it is for Puig and Toni Comín, who also returned to the State this Thursday —on Sunday he will do so in Catalonia— to collect his credentials as a Member of the European Parliament.

It had been 3,272 days since the singers of Terrassa projected their voices for the freedom of political prisoners and exiles in front of the City Hall. Specifically, since November 14, 2017, when they began, and nine years of painful exile have already passed. "Rain, snow, or heat": the daily meeting was unavoidable among the singers who attended with varying regularity. Some, with songbooks to fund anti-repressive solidarity. This Wednesday, however, and despite singing the same songs as always – such as I want to be free, in addition to the national anthem–, the hundreds gathered who filled the square felt an incomparable emotion: it was the day of Lluís Puig's return. The former Minister of Culture chose this evening event of the pro-independence collective to put an end to his exile, once the arrest warrants by the Supreme Court were lifted –the archiving of the case still remains, which should happen soon.

The interlocutory order of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court that has applied the amnesty to Dolors Bassa, Jordi Turull, Oriol Junqueras and Raül Romeva is nothing short of a declaration of war. The Supreme Court says it has felt undermined by the Constitutional Court because the latter has “expanded” to limits “unprecedented in its history” its function as a guarantor of rights, even accusing it of “mutating” its role to become “a final instance with the capacity to review the interpretation of any legal norm subscribed by the Supreme Court”. 

Those who were political prisoners are already amnestied. This morning, the minister Lluís Puig tweeted:

Pablo Llarena assumes that the Supreme Court is bound to apply the amnesty to Carles Puigdemont, but resists facilitating it. It was expected that this week the investigating judge would conclude the summary proceedings and refer the case against the former President of the Generalitat and the former ministers Toni Comín and Lluís Puig to the trial court of the Procés so that Manuel Marchena could apply the total and definitive amnesty to the exiles – although he first still had to grant a five-day period for the parties to pronounce themselves again–. These are the two resolutions missing for the Supreme Court to put an end to the judicial persecution of Puigdemont. However, the investigator has slowed down the path and has limited himself to dismissing the appeal that Vox filed against the lifting of the arrest warrants that the Supreme Court issued after the Constitutional Court endorsed the amnesty in cases of embezzlement. Llarena thus delays the outcome: he takes one more step, but avoids taking the decisive step, which will have to come in the next few days.

Laura Díez (Barcelona, 1969) is a professor of constitutional law at the University of Barcelona and a member of the Constitutional Court since 2023. She speaks to ARA following a key decision on the amparo appeal by 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.