In recent months, the PP and Vox have spread suspicions about alleged electoral fraud in two directions: postal voting and the right to vote of those nationalized through the Democratic Memory Law. After Isabel Díaz Ayuso took less than an hour once the Cortes were dissolved to recommend that people not vote by mail –a mistrust that the PP spokesperson has disavowed–, the focus is once again on the Supreme Court, which a month ago blocked the right to vote for thousands of people until they prove that they are descendants of exiles. Following the announcement of the 29-N elections, both Iustitia Europa and Vox have demanded that the Supreme Court act to ensure that the precautionary measures are complied with, since the electoral body called to vote in the elections was closed two months ago, before the high court took the measures. This morning, the Minister of the Presidency, Fèlix Bolaños, warned that if the Supreme Court maintains its decision, the 29-N census will be "altered" and would lose 400,000 people added to the Electoral Census of Absent Residents –CERA– since 23-J.

Mariano Bergés is the lawyer for Dolors Bassa. He defended the former Minister of Labor, Social Affairs and Families during the trial of the Procés and almost two years ago he filed an appeal for protection (recurs d'empara) to the Constitutional Court against Manuel Marchena's refusal to apply the amnesty law to her. The ruling has paved the way for the rest of the 1-O government: it will allow the return of Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Lluís Puig to Catalonia and will put an end to the disqualifications of Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Turull and Raül Romeva. The appeal argued that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the amnesty “frontally attacks” the “spirit and purpose” of the norm and “dangerously delves” into the legislative function with a maneuver that “entails the practical repeal” of the law.

3,263 days have passed since he left for Belgium and 847 days since the amnesty came into force, and Carles Puigdemont now has a clear path to return to Catalonia, although he will wait for the final archiving of the case to do so—in a few days or weeks. He will be able to put an end to almost nine years of exile after the Constitutional Court ordered the Supreme Court to apply the amnesty law to the 1-O leaders in a “preferential and urgent” manner and, a few minutes later, Judge Pablo Llarena lifted the arrest warrant that had been in force since November 2017 and which he confirmed in July 2024 with a convoluted justification. The TC now concludes that pardoning the embezzlement is “the only conclusion reconcilable” with the “rules of logic and common sense” and reproaches Manuel Marchena for deciding to “evade the genuine meaning” of the amnesty with an “internally contradictory” interpretation that is “manifestly contrary” to the “purpose and spirit” of the law.

The president of the Constitutional Court, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, fundamentally amends the Supreme Court's refusal to apply the amnesty law and considers that pardoning the embezzlement attributed to the October 1 referendum is "the only conclusion reconcilable" with the "rules of logic and common sense" and with an interpretation of the amnesty that "attends to its spirit and purpose" and its "own genesis." This is reflected in the report he has prepared, to which ARA has had access, regarding the appeal for constitutional protection (recurso de amparo) by Dolors Bassa, who was Minister of Labor, Social Affairs and Families during the October 1 referendum and is disqualified until 2031. The text argues that the "interpretation sponsored" by the Supreme Court was "clearly expansive," "opposed" to the "purpose and spirit" of the law and "contrary to the defendant," and establishes that Dolors Bassa's rights to effective judicial protection, to access public functions and positions, and to criminal legality were violated.

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.

Since 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.

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.

For almost a decade, the return of Puigdemont has marked Catalan and Spanish politics, but now the moment of truth has arrived. It seems clear that the Constitutional Court will grant protection to the leadership of the 'Procés' –this Tuesday it already took the first step– and that the Supreme Court will withdraw the arrest warrant for the former president. This is confirmed by both TC sources and Supreme Court sources, and Puigdemont's entourage also gives credit to this path. They say, they say... that the former president is now indeed returning. The scheduled calendar is as follows: this Tuesday, September 22, there was an initial debate at the Constitutional Court in which a majority of magistrates positioned themselves in favor of the amnesty for Jordi Turull and against the proposal by the conservative rapporteur José María Macías to reject it. As a result of this, the report will move to the next plenary session, which will be on October 6, where it is expected that President Conde-Pumpido will present a proposal favorable to the amnesty of Dolors Bassa, that it be approved by a majority, and that it also have effects for Puigdemont. In other words, it would be at this moment that the Constitutional Court would firmly endorse for the first time the amnesty for the crime of embezzlement related to the 1-O and would open the door to his return.If everything goes according to plan, when this TC ruling is published, which may be a few days after the decision of October 6th or 7th, Llarena will be bound by it and could proceed, even on his own initiative, without notifying the parties, to withdraw the arrest warrant for the former president, Toni Comín, and Lluís Puig. This would imply that Puigdemont would no longer be in the state security forces' alert system and could already circulate freely within the Spanish state without being arrested.However, at this point his case would not yet be completely archived: at the same moment Llarena would have to dictate the conclusion of the summary and send it to the Supreme Court chamber, which after asking for the opinion of the parties (they usually have about five working days to do so), would decide whether to close the case definitively also by virtue of the endorsement of the appeal for protection to the Constitutional Court. When exactly would Puigdemont return? He does not want to advance anything and everything will depend on the content of the resolutions, but he could choose up to three moments to return: once the TC has decided; waiting for the withdrawal of Llarena's arrest warrant, or once the case has been definitively archived. From his environment, however, they prescribe prudence and remember that whenever it is, we are talking about October, November or at the latest December – provided everything goes as planned.The implications of the return

The fact that Puigdemont is returning to Catalonia opens a new phase both in the Principality and in Spain.

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The Constitutional Court has activated the countdown for Carles Puigdemont's return to Catalonia. It has done so by endorsing the application of the amnesty law to the embezzlement attributed to the Procés, as ARA has learned. As expected, the progressive majority imposed its criteria and rejected the proposal of the conservative José María Macías, who was in favor of rejecting the appeal for protection (recurs d'empara) by Jordi Turull –Minister of the Presidency during the 1-O and current secretary general of Junts– and validating the criteria of the Supreme Court, which until now has refused to exonerate the crime of embezzlement. After an hour and a half of deliberation, he was left in the minority.

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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.

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If it were up to the Supreme Court, former president Carles Puigdemont would not be granted amnesty. Not even after the ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union in which it dictated that the 1-O (referendum) did not affect the financial interests of the European Union. This was demonstrated once again this Tuesday, when the investigating magistrate of the 'Procés' case, Pablo Llarena, again refused to withdraw the arrest warrant against the former president and apply the amnesty to him. However, the tone of the interlocutory order was already different from previous ones, like someone who already knows they are reaching the end of the road. The high court maintains its doctrine of excluding the crime of embezzlement from the rule because it interprets that Puigdemont and the rest of the exiles had a financial benefit following the October 2017 referendum, but it also admits that this is the case while awaiting the ongoing appeals for constitutional protection (amparo) at the Constitutional Court (TC). Llarena's decision comes weeks before the TC begins to discuss the appeal for constitutional protection of the pro-independence leaders, which should foreseeably dismantle this criterion of the Supreme Court to unblock the application of the amnesty. The forecast, therefore, is that if the Constitutional Court is clear in endorsing the arguments of the former prisoners and exiles, Llarena will indeed modify his doctrine.

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The Supreme Court judge who drafted the interlocutory decision that blocks the right to vote for thousands of Spaniards who obtained nationality by availing themselves of the Democratic Memory Law –adopting the PP's thesis that the Grandchildren Law is a “founded, real and serious danger” that could “gravely affect the objectivity and transparency” of the elections– is an old acquaintance of the independence movement. He is Antonio Narváez, who was a magistrate of the Constitutional Court from 2014 to 2023 and, therefore, played a prominent role during the years of the 'Procés'. His name resonates in Catalonia because in February 2021 he stepped aside from the debate on the amparo appeals of the political prisoners against the October 1st ruling. He had to recuse himself after the pro-independence leaders collectively requested his disqualification due to words he had uttered in November 2017.

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Last Monday, King Felipe VI received the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles; the Chief of the Defense Staff, Teodoro López Calderón; and the Commander of Ceuta, Luis Fernández Herrero, at the Zarzuela Palace. The Palace's communication services immediately released a solemn image in which the King and the two military commanders were seen dressed in military uniforms. A detail that did not go unnoticed and which triggered speculation due to the absence of President Sánchez, who is responsible for setting and directing governance strategies. The military power, therefore, wanted to make its presence felt, and the Head of State offered them the opportunity, amidst rumors about discrepancies between the President and the Minister. And it is hard to believe that the image was innocent. In a country that comes from where it comes, the staging is, at the very least, unsettling. What is the reason for this militaristic gesture in the face of a crisis of considerable complexity that does not admit dysfunctional gestures, much less of this character? The monarch staging the army.

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“The interpretation of the Supreme Court cannot be labeled as surprising or unpredictable, much less capricious or the fruit of an alleged animosity.” The first version of the first draft of the Constitutional Court regarding the amnesty for embezzlement, prepared by the conservative José María Macías and to which ARA has had access, proposes rejecting the appeal for amparo presented by Jordi Turull against Manuel Marchena's decision not to grant him amnesty and to keep his disqualification in effect until 2030. The document, which will be debated at the plenary session of the TC on September 22, fully endorses the thesis of the high court, which avoided pardoning the embezzlement by alleging that the members of the 1-O Government enriched themselves because they did not pay for the referendum out of their own pockets: “The benefit can also be defined as the mere possibility of improperly disposing of funds not previously available, a fact that increases spending capacity and the consequent possibility of acquiring goods and services. Being able to dispose of what was not available already implies a benefit,” the draft argues.

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The same week that Pedro Sánchez's judicial nightmare has been reactivated at the National Court, and a few meters from where the former director general of the Civil Guard was testifying, under investigation in the Leire Díez case, the Supreme Court has kicked off the judicial year. Everyone knows – in Ferraz, in Génova, and in La Moncloa – that the timing of the justice system will mark the final twists and turns of the legislative term, both due to the cases splashing the PSOE and the application of the amnesty. And one of the great protagonists has been the reprimands for the criticisms of judges: “It is not admissible for public disqualification to become an instrument of pressure,” declared the president of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), Isabel Perelló. “If the disqualifications come from those who hold institutional responsibilities, the gravity is greater,” she added.

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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.

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The Supreme Court has acceded to the claims of Vox and Iustitia Europa –an extra-parliamentary party common in cases involving the PSOE– and has temporarily suspended the right to vote for people who have obtained Spanish nationality through what is known as the grandchildren's law. It is a precautionary measure that it has adopted until it issues a final judgment and while Spanish consulates do not "issue certifying documentation" of their status as descendants of exiles. This addresses those "born outside of Spain, to a father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, who were originally Spanish," who suffered exile for "political, ideological, or belief-based reasons, or for reasons of sexual orientation or identity" and who "had lost or renounced" Spanish nationality. This is the exact phrase that appears in the Democratic Memory Law.

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The ruling of the CJEU on the amnesty law has caused a ripple effect. In recent days, the Supreme Court has rushed to close six cases that were on its table and had been pending for months. However, despite this sudden awakening, the fourteen people who have benefited from the penal oblivion law do not – strictly speaking – have anything to do with Luxembourg's endorsement. It was a filter that the high court implicitly set and which has ended up being the pretext for keeping all these cases frozen for nine months, given that last October the Constitutional Court had explicitly given the green light to apply the law.

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Since it was put on the table, Vox has made the amnesty law one of its main battle horses, promising actively and passively that, if it comes to the Spanish government, it will "reverse" and "repeal" the norm immediately. The People's Party has also joined this idea, and its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in a dynamic that, analyzing the archives, is common among the populars: promising the repeal of PSOE laws to end up keeping them intact once they come to power —as happened in the past with the abortion law or same-sex marriage. Despite the constant insistence of the far-right on this supposed repeal, the threat clashes head-on with an insurmountable wall: the architecture of the rule of law. According to experts consulted by ARA, Vox's promise is legally unfeasible and the elimination of the law would have practically no effect on the accused. In fact, the party itself admits to ARA that it is aware of this legal wall.

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The uncertainty about the application of the amnesty law to the leaders of the Procés has left a judicial labyrinth open. Waiting to see if the Supreme Court will apply the CJEU ruling, within this labyrinth there is a path that is still unresolved and leaves an open question: in case of a hypothetical non-application of the amnesty, is it possible to open the file for a second pardon to erase what was left pending? At the time, the Spanish government partially pardoned the leaders of the Procés – it was the only possible way after the sentencing court opposed the measure of grace – that is, they forgave them the prison sentence, but kept intact the disqualification penalty that affected Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Turull, Raül Romeva and Dolors Bassa, who were also convicted of embezzlement. This disqualification, for example, prevents the current leader of ERC from running in an election –as he has shown himself willing to do– or to teach.

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