A judge of Spain’s Supreme Court has lifted the national arrest warrants against former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont, marking a significant legal development in his ongoing legal saga. This decision comes after nearly nine years since Puigdemont fled Spain following the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. The ruling by Pablo Llarena, the investigating magistrate in the Supreme Court’s Criminal Chamber, also applies to former Catalan ministers Antoni Comín and Lluís Puig. The order takes immediate effect, directing law enforcement not to detain the trio on the basis of these warrants.
The move follows a ruling by the Constitutional Court, which upheld an amparo appeal filed by former Catalan minister Dolors Bassa. An amparo appeal is a specialized legal mechanism used in various countries to safeguard constitutional rights against infringement by authorities. The Constitutional Court annulled previous Supreme Court orders and demanded a new ruling to declare Bassa’s embezzlement offense amnestied, challenging the initial exclusion under the Catalan amnesty law. This ruling impacted the legal basis upon which the arrest warrants for Puigdemont and others had been maintained, as explained in a source.
Pablo Llarena highlighted that executing the warrants prior to a revised understanding could infringe upon Article 17 of the Spanish Constitution, which safeguards the right to liberty. Puigdemont, who was the President of Catalonia during the 2017 referendum, had been summoned in 2024 by the Spanish Supreme Court over charges tied to the region’s bid for independence, a move criticized by various civic groups as an infringement on freedom of assembly.
While this legal development signals an easing of immediate judicial pressures against Puigdemont, the ruling is described as provisional. It does not broadly apply the amnesty or resolve broader legal questions still pending. Moreover, the Constitutional Court’s interpretation dilutes the rationale for exclusion of amnesty solely in terms of embezzlement connected to personal gain, steering the ruling away from conflating financing of the independence movement with generic corruption.
This intricately linked series of legal decisions by Spain’s judicial hierarchy reflects ongoing complexities in the political and legal landscape concerning Catalonia’s contentious independence movement. It underscores evolving interpretations of constitutional protections, as well as broader debates on the right to self-determination within the framework of Spain’s legal obligations to both national and international statutes.