It has been 522 days since the Official State Gazette The Official State Gazette (BOE) published the amnesty law, following a turbulent negotiation between the PSOE and Junts and attempts by the PP to torpedo it in the SenateHowever, the leaders of the October 1st referendum have still not fully benefited due to the Supreme Court's reluctance to apply it to the crime of embezzlement. Now, both they and the other defendants in the Catalan independence trial are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel: the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), Dean Spielmann, This week, he has spoken out in support of the substantial scope of the standard.He makes minor criticisms, such as that the two-month period given for its implementation—which many courts have also failed to meet—is insufficient, but he defends the aim of political and social "reconciliation."

The first warning came in April, And finally, the sanction has arrived: the Court of Auditors has imposed two fines on Junts for violating electoral legislation regarding campaigns in the 2023 municipal elections. After auditing the electoral accounts of Compromiso Municipal, the Junts party's municipalist brand, the oversight body determined that it exceeded the spending limits established by law. The total sum that Carles Puigdemont's party must pay amounts to €383,317.96.

Daniel de Alfonso, former director of the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia (OAC), He was dismissed in 2016 for allegedly being linked to the dirty war against the independence movement. His name came into question following the publication of conversations held just before the November 9th referendum, in which he conspired with former PP Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz to fabricate information incriminating leaders of Convergència e Esquerra (Convergència e Esquerra). Once he left the organization, it came to light that De Alfonso and two other former senior OAC officials received additional salaries through "undue" three-year periods—amounting to €200,000—and through other items added to their paychecks, such as a quality bonus. This was stated this Monday by the Anti-Fraud lawyer and the Prosecutor's Office in a trial before the Court of Auditors, which will now have to decide whether De Alfonso's accounting liability has been proven and order him to repay the money.

On 22 July 2016 the Court of Auditors published an extensive report in which it analysed the foreign action of the different autonomous communities in the period 2011-2014. Seen with today's eyes it is very interesting to see how that report, to which ARA has had access, did not question the external action of autonomous communities, including the Generalitat de Catalunya's, and limited itself to making recommendations towards strengthening synergies between the State and communities to avoid duplicities or increase controls.

Finally, the Catalan Government has found a legal formula to cover the (totally exorbitant) bails imposed by the Court of Auditors on 34 current and former Generalitat officials who are held responsible for the Generalitat's foreign action between 2012 and 2017. The Catalan Minister of Economy, Jaume Giró, explained yesterday that the executive council had approved the creation of a risk fund endowed with €10m to which all public servants can apply, with the aim of covering the economic damages that may arise from the exercise of their powers. Initially this fund will depend on the Institut Català de Finances, but in the long run an external entity will be created that will be like a public insurance company that will cover everything that is left out of the private insurance that the Generalitat has contracted.

The proceedings of the Court of Auditors over the Generalitat's external action against 41 current and former Catalan government officials, who will have to post a joint bail of €5.4m in the next few days, is a true monument to ignominy, a scandal that brings the quality of Spanish democracy down a few notches. In fact, the way of proceeding is very reminiscent of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes, which applied justice retroactively against the defenders of democracy, accusing them of being "rebels".

The pardons only affects the 9 politicians sentenced to prison in the trial of the Catalan independence bid, which was heard in the Supreme Court in the first half of 2019. Therefore, it leaves out all the rest of the open cases against thousands of people, about 3,000 according to the calculations of Òmnium Cultural. These have been kept alive in different courts and institutions of the State administration, such as the Court of Auditors. Defusing them will be one of the challenges of the new stage of dialogue between the Spanish and Catalan governments. This is a summary of the main pending cases: