Spanish prosecutors pave way for Puigdemont’s return

Spain’s Public Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday narrowly ruled in favour of the inclusion of embezzlement offences in the recently passed and highly controversial amnesty law – a decisive step towards allowing former Catalan separatist president Carles Puigdemont to return to Spain without facing prosecution.

The amnesty law, which came into force recently, pardons illegal actions committed by nearly 400 Catalan separatist leaders, including Puigdemont himself, for acts committed between 2011 and 2023, including Catalonia’s serious secessionist attempt in 2017.

However, despite strong disagreements between State Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz and the more conservative members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the position in favour of applying the amnesty law to all crimes committed by the Catalan separatists during those years ultimately prevailed by a narrow margin of two votes.

With this, the Public Prosecutor’s Office will ask the Supreme Court on Wednesday to pardon Puigdemont and other Catalan separatist leaders and to withdraw the national arrest warrants against them.

While Spain’s main opposition force, Partido Popular (PP/EPP), reacted sharply to the news on Tuesday calling for the resignation of García Ortiz, whose impartiality the right-wing formation questioned, Tuesday’s move by the Public Prosecutor’s Office means that the law can also be applied to the four separatist leaders.

These include the former vice president of the Catalan regional government, Oriol Junqueras, and former regional ministers Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull, and Dolors Bassa, who have been convicted of embezzlement and are currently serving disqualification sentences.

The amnesty also extends to the three separatist leaders who fled Spain after the events of 2017 and were not brought to trial – in addition to Puigdemont himself, who fled to Belgium, the former ‘ministers’ of the Catalan government, Toni Comín and Lluis Puig, were also prosecuted for embezzlement.

Now, the ball is in the court of the Supreme Court, which will give the final word on whether or not to apply the amnesty law to those convicted and prosecuted for the serious events that took place in Catalonia between 2011 and 2023—including the crime of embezzlement of public money to divert funds from the Spanish State to make electoral propaganda in favour of the independence of Catalonia.

The Spanish judiciary will also have to determine whether the main leaders of the Catalan separatist movement have enriched themselves by illegally increasing their assets.

Four members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office argued for the exclusion of the crime of embezzlement from a possible amnesty, arguing that the exceptional law excludes acts that “imply personal enrichment or financial gain”, as well as pointing out that the financial interests of the EU were affected when the events took place.

In the end, against all the odds, the attorney general’s position prevailed, denying that the EU’s economic interests were affected and denying that there was any personal “intent to enrich” in the use of public funds to organise the illegal referendum on self-determination on 1 October 2017.

The PP and the PSOE, facing each other on two irreconcilable fronts in several aspects of the very tense Spanish political arena, have a tough battle over the renewal of the judges’ governing body, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), which the PP has been blocking since 2018.

They are also at loggerheads over the amnesty law, which the PP and the far-right VOX party, the third largest force in parliament, consider unconstitutional.

The PP has announced an offensive in the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court to stop the law.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)

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