MADRID, Spain – A day after the general election was called, former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont has had his path back to Spain definitively cleared, free of any criminal charges and national arrest warrant, after the Constitutional Court resolved his future in a plenary split between conservatives and progressives. The progressive bloc, in the majority and led by court president Cándido Conde-Pumpido, approved the ruling that upholds amnestying the embezzlement offence of one of those convicted over the procés, Jordi Turull.
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With it, the court of guarantees sets the doctrine for also amnestying Puigdemont and the rest of those charged and convicted over the 1 October independence referendum. The Supreme Court appears determined to apply the constitutional doctrine without the court chaired by Conde-Pumpido having to address, one by one, all the amparo appeals of the procés leaders, according to sources at that court. Sources at the Constitutional Court predict that Puigdemont will be able to return to Spain before the end of October, while sources close to the Junts leader say his return will take place as soon as the amnesty is applied to him. The final pending step is for Supreme Court investigator Pablo Llarena to decide to lift the national arrest warrant against the independence leader and amnesty him for the crime of embezzlement.
On Tuesday the plenary was due to approve two draft rulings, one by Conde-Pumpido and one written by conservative José María Macías. Conde-Pumpido proposed from the outset amnestying Dolors Bassa, while Macías brought to the previous plenary a draft proposing to dismiss Turull’s amparo appeal. After seeing his text rejected in plenary, Macías chose to draft a ruling himself reflecting the view of the progressive majority favourable to the claims of the Junts secretary general. In the process, Macías shared the text with the rest of the plenary and received proposed amendments from the progressive magistrates, but the conservative declined to include them all, finally opting to hand over the draft, which will now fall to Conde-Pumpido and be debated shortly.
The five conservative magistrates on the plenary have announced they will issue dissenting opinions against the ruling approved on Tuesday, these votes being the tool for recording their disagreement with the majority decision. In any case, from Tuesday the doctrine establishes that the Supreme Court violated the fundamental rights of the procés leaders when it refused to amnesty them for embezzlement. The rulings approved by the Constitutional plenary, especially the one drafted by Conde-Pumpido, mark a path for the Supreme Court’s Criminal Chamber and investigator Llarena.
The president’s text completely amends the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Article 1 of the amnesty law, which states that acts of embezzlement are amnestiable only when their aim was to finance, fund or facilitate the referendum, adding that such acts will not be amnestiable when there is a purpose of enrichment, and delimiting how purpose of enrichment should be understood: the pursuit of a personal benefit of a patrimonial nature. The Supreme Court decided not to amnesty the 1 October embezzlers, arguing that the independence leaders sought to enrich themselves in that they did with others’ patrimony entrusted to them what they could not or would not do with their own, directing public funds to their own personal objectives which, without ceasing to be political, also have that particular or sectarian side, with the availability of public funds to finance their plans amounting for those convicted to a relief from all personal expense.
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According to Conde-Pumpido in the ruling approved on Tuesday, this interpretation has a clearly expansive sense, opposed to the purpose of the law and contrary to the accused, with the Constitutional Court establishing that the Supreme Court’s reasoning is unpredictable and, departing from the purpose of the law, fails to maintain the necessary nexus of coherence between the decision adopted, the rule serving as its basis and the purposes justifying the institution of amnesty. The ruling notes that the Criminal Chamber has violated the right to effective judicial protection of the amparo claimant Dolors Bassa, in its aspect of the right to obtain a reasoned resolution founded in law.
