The amnesty reaches only 20% of its beneficiaries after the two-month deadline given to the judges expired

Justice in Spain rarely resolves its cases within reasonable timeframes, not even when imposed by law. Quick trials are slow, investigations drag on and there are decisions that never come and leave businesses and citizens with their pockets (or hearts) hanging in the balance. Nor do statements or trials usually start at the scheduled time. With these elements in mind, it was foreseeable that the administration of justice would not meet the demanding deadlines established by the amnesty law, which has just been in force for two months this Sunday.

The text approved by the Government urged judges and courts to apply the law “as a matter of priority and urgency.” And it gave them a “maximum” period of two months to identify the beneficiaries and make it a reality. Time has passed and the measure of clemency has not had all its effects: according to the calculations of this newspaper, less than a hundred of the 486 people who, according to the calculations of the Attorney General’s Office, may be beneficiaries of the law, have been amnestied. Among them there are around 40 pro-independence activists – anonymous citizens who participated in mobilizations in favor of the process and ended up involved in legal proceedings for public disorder—and 50 police officers who repressed voting in the referendum of October 1, 2017 or injured protesters in the 2019 protests. The measure of clemency has so far, however, had little success among the politicians who led the processstarting with the former president Carles Puigdemont, despite the fact that the rule was designed in part to fix his procedural situation: it has only been applied to three.

Unlike what happens in the day-to-day machinery of justice, neither the excessive workload nor the lack of human or material resources explain why the amnesty is moving forward so timidly. The judges and courts, in fact, have reacted in time to the publication of the clemency measure in the BOE. But not to apply it but, in many cases, to stop it. The Government and its partners, especially the pro-independence parties, accuse them of deliberately blocking a law that they do not like. The majority of the judiciary, on the other hand, considers that either the amnesty is not applicable to the cases they are investigating, or that they raise legal doubts, which has led them to raise queries to the Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that represent a slowdown in the application of the law and will force those interested to wait.

With part of the Government that organized the 1-O behind bars, Òmnium Cultural —one of the entities that directed popular support for the process— first raised the need for an amnesty. The idea took on the appearance of becoming a reality when, after the last elections, Pedro Sánchez needed the votes of the Junts deputies for his investiture. The text was initially conceived to provide a definitive solution to a political generation in Catalonia that had staked everything on independence and was facing serious penal consequences (imprisonment and disqualification from holding public office), but also economic consequences, with open proceedings in the Court of Auditors. The draft was expanded to include all criminal conduct linked to the process and, in particular, to the young people who had supported the movement and were involved in criminal cases, including for terrorist offences. It was the way to put an end, in the words of Òmnium and the independence movement, to the “repression” of the State.

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But the politicians who thought up and designed the text for themselves have been, paradoxically, those who have remained (until now) most on the sidelines of the amnesty. They will have to follow a slower path, that of appeals. The Supreme Court concluded, at the beginning of July, that the crime of embezzlement attributed to the independence leaders (those already convicted, such as Junqueras, and those on trial, such as Puigdemont) is not amnestiable. The investigating judge Pablo Llarena even decided to keep the arrest warrant against the leader in force. former presidentwhich the Mossos were unable to carry out last Thursday after the brief and surreal incursion of the Junts leader in Barcelona after seven years on the run.

There have been exceptions. Like the former mayor of Figueres, Marta Felip, who is awaiting trial for disobedience for her support of the referendum. Or the secretary general of Esquerra Republicana, Marta Rovira, to whom Llarena did apply amnesty because she was being prosecuted for a crime of disobedience, which does not even entail prison sentences but only disqualification. Rovira was able to return from her refuge in Switzerland and breathe a sigh of relief, as was the former Minister of the Interior, Miquel Buch, who, just two weeks after the law came into force, became the first person to be amnestied. Buch had been sentenced to four and a half years in prison and 20 years of disqualification for hiring a mosso to act as Puigdemont’s bodyguard in Belgium. The High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) considered, on its own criteria, that the crime of embezzlement attributed to him should be amnestied because it did not involve a personal benefit.

The senior officials of the 2017 Government who are awaiting trial will also have to wait much longer than two months. Given the doubts in its application, the TSJC has referred the cases of Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó (considered the architects of 1-O) to the Constitutional Court and the CJEU. The same occurs in the case of the members of the so-called Committees for the Defence of the Republic (CDR) prosecuted for terrorism: the National Court has expressed its doubts and has asked whether it should go to European justice. The politicians have come out unscathed in another case for terrorism, that of Tsunami Democràtic (the movement that organised massive protests after the sentence against the leaders of the process)but not because of amnesty: an error by Judge Manuel García-Castellón in the time limits for the investigation forced the case to be closed.

So far, most of the beneficiaries have been activists who at one point mobilized in favor of the process and ended up investigated, prosecuted, tried or convicted (depending on the case) for crimes such as assault on authority, public disorder or injuries. The courts have had no doubts in their cases and in recent weeks there has been a trickle of similar decisions, generally during the process of reviewing sentences. This process has been halted with the arrival of August, a month when the courts are closed, but it is expected that the number of those amnestied will continue to grow in the coming months.

The separatists are not the majority among those who have been amnestied. With the snapshot of the two months since the entry into force, that majority is made up of police officers: 50 in total. Of these, 46 are riot police from the National Police Corps who were one step away from sitting in the dock for injuries and crimes against moral integrity; their action to suppress the votes on 1-O was “disproportionate”, but the law also provides for exonerating them from criminal responsibility. The same happened with another four Mossos who were awaiting trial for assaulting protesters in October 2019, during protests against the sentencing of process.

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