Last night, Carles Puigdemont exacted a significant price. As we explained yesterday, The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in his favor. (him, Comín, and Ponsatí) and established that the European Parliament stripped them of their parliamentary immunity with clear bias. The ruling states that the rapporteur in charge of investigating the Supreme Court's request was a Bulgarian MEP from the same political group as Vox, the party that acted as a private prosecutor in the trial of the Catalan independence leaders. This individual participated in an event entitled "Catalonia is Spain" in which he called himselfPuigdemont in prison"What happened yesterday doesn't happen very often, because the court has corrected the shortcomings in the European Parliament and the General Court of the European Union and told them to please do things properly. The president in exile celebrated it thus:"

On Tuesday I told you that the State must compensate for the damage that Renfe and Adif, as non-executive arms of the Ministry of Transport, were causing to the Catalan economy. We said that the commuter rail works aren't quick, fine, but the extraordinary financial compensation could be. Well, today it's news that The Government will demand that the State pay the bill for the railway chaos.What bill? Well, some items are very clear: the free commuter rail service decreed until the end of the month, or the cost of lifting the toll barriers on the C-32, or the cost of hiring information staff at the stations or buses and drivers for the commuter rail lines that now have to travel by bus.

Eight years after the events of October 2017, there is still no clear consensus on what the so-called Process was. This period began with the 2012 Diada, the first organized by the ANC, and can officially be considered over on May 12, 2024, when the majority of the independence movement loses. During this period, with varying intensity, the debate over independence and the self-determination referendum dominated the Catalan and, to some extent, Spanish political agendas. There is no doubt that the culminating moment of the Process was October 1, 2017, when more than two million people participated in a referendum on independence, thus defying the ban imposed by the Spanish courts.

The process to withdraw MEPs Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí's immunity has not been smooth nor has it involved unanimous support for the Spanish justice system, rather the opposite. Despite the final approval of the request, the result draws a clear division in the European Parliament around the Catalan issue: 400 votes in favor, 248 against and 45 abstentions. In other words, 42% of MEPs have refused to endorse the reactivation of the process of extradition of Catalan pro-independence leaders who are in exile outside Spain and who won the support of nearly one million votes in the last European elections. As Toni Comín said, this is a "political victory" for Catalan independence, which once again sees how things in Europe are seen substantially different than in the Spanish state.

It is back to the courts for Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí after their parliamentary immunity was withdrawn this morning. The result of the European Parliament plenary vote on Monday is the definitive confirmation which comes as no surprise. By 400 votes in favour, 248 against and 45 abstentions, in the case of Puigdemont, and by 404 votes in favour, 247 against and 42 abstentions in the case of Comín and Ponsatí, the European Parliament has decided to grant the suspension of immunity requested by the Spanish Supreme Court so that the judicial process can continue in Belgium and Scotland for their extraditions

Parliament's legal affairs committee voted on Tuesday to waive Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí's immunity, as proposed by Bulgarian ultra-conservative rapporteur Angel Dzhambazki. His report received 15 votes in favour, 8 against and 2 abstentions. This vote is the first step towards accepting the Spanish Supreme Court's request, which requires the three MEPs to lose their immunity from prosecution before extradition can be requested. But it is not the final step, which will have to be taken by all 705 MEPs in a vote scheduled for the week starting March 8. After that, the Belgian and Scottish courts will be able to continue to process the suspended warrants pending the request.