The return of the amnesty to Congress brings Puigdemont’s return to Spain closer

This Tuesday, the PP asserted its absolute majority in the Senate to approve the veto of the amnesty law. It was a step planned in the parliamentary processing of the law that, far from representing a brake on the grace measure, brings its entry into force closer. Now, the text will return to Congress, where the veto is expected to be lifted with the support of the PSOE and its parliamentary partners and its final approval will be voted on. Although there is a deadline until mid-July, the socialists’ intention is for it to be done in a plenary session on May 30.

From there, it will be a matter of hours before the rule is published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) and comes into force. At that moment the amnesty will begin to display its first effects, which will directly impact some of the defendants, including the leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont: the courts must “immediately” agree on the lifting of the precautionary measures and orders. of detention, which implies that the Supreme Court will have to annul the national arrest order that weighs on the former president since November 2017 and which is what has stopped his return to Spain in these almost seven years.

Legal sources indicate that this lifting of measures, in theory, should be almost automatic, regardless of whether the court later studies whether or not the amnesty is applicable to Puigdemont. However, the text establishes that it is the judges who have to lift the precautionary measures, so the decision will be in the hands of the Supreme Court. If, as expected, the Criminal Chamber lifts the arrest order in the hours after the law comes into force, Puigdemont will be able to travel to Spain from that moment on without risk of being arrested.

The deadline to hold the plenary session of the Parliament’s constitution following last Sunday’s elections ends on June 10, so, depending on when this session is scheduled, the leader of Junts could even arrive in time for the Chamber’s launch. , although he has not committed to it. Afterwards, the new president of the Parliament will have 10 business days to call the investiture plenary session, a period that ends on June 25.

By then, it is foreseeable that the Supreme Court has not yet communicated whether it applies the amnesty to Puigdemont, who has two open cases, that of processes, where he is prosecuted for aggravated embezzlement and disobedience; and that of Tsunami Democràtic, in which he is investigated for terrorism. From the moment the law comes into force, the court has two months to decide, in each of these two processes, between three options: amnesty; refer a matter to the European justice or the Constitutional Court; or refuse to apply the measure of grace to the former Catalan president in either of the two procedures. The first two scenarios guarantee that Puigdemont can remain in Catalonia without risk of being arrested, at least until there is a response from the community justice or the court of guarantees. But a hypothetical refusal by the Supreme Court to apply the amnesty would leave him exposed and he would have to appear in court or face a new arrest warrant.

The steps taken by the high court will have repercussions not only on Puigdemont and the rest of the defendants who fled from Spanish justice and to whom the court will have to renounce judging whether the law applies, but also on the independence leaders to whom convicted in the case of processes and that, although they were pardoned from the prison sentence, they still have the disqualification pending.

Oriol Junqueras finds himself in this situation, who this Tuesday reaffirmed himself as president of ERC. His sentence falls with the amnesty, but if the high court, as is foreseeable, refers the case to the CJEU, the application of the amnesty would be suspended and the disqualification will remain in force until there is a response. Legal sources estimate the duration of the procedure in the European Court between eight and 18 months, depending on whether the community judges consider that there are reasons to carry out an accelerated or urgent procedure. These deadlines, in principle, would once again prevent Junqueras from attending the elections in the event that last Sunday’s elections had to be repeated, unless he asked the CJEU for precautionary measures so that the amnesty is not suspended while the court resolves the issue. raised by the Supreme Court and the European judges granted them.

However, there would be a worse scenario for Junqueras, which would be for the Supreme Court to conclude that the embezzlement for which the independence leaders were convicted does not fit into the measure of grace. In the latest version of the law, the application of the amnesty was limited only to cases in which it is aimed at financing acts linked to the I processeds and “as long as there has been no enrichment purpose”, an amendment agreed upon by the PSOE and its partners to overcome Europe’s objections to amnesty corruption crimes. But the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court maintains that enrichment does not occur only when there is personal enrichment and on that the high court based its refusal to apply the latest reform of the crime of embezzlement to secessionist leaders. The law attempts to limit the judges’ room for maneuver by establishing that enrichment will not be considered when there has not been “the purpose of obtaining a personal benefit of a financial nature,” but sources from the high court assume that there will be debate on this matter before to make a decision.

The court also predicts debate on the application of the grace measure to the cause of Democratic Tsunami, divided between the Supreme Court (which investigates the accused: Puigdemont and the ERC deputy in the Parliament Rubén Wagensberg) and the National Court, and in which the judges see signs of terrorism, a crime for which the amnesty law raises exceptions. Judge Manuel García Castellón has summoned eight of the accused to testify by videoconference on May 22, including the general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira, who fled to Switzerland in 2018. The case will have to be suspended before the end July if the instructor asks the CJEU or the Constitutional Court about the amnesty law.

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