The Supreme Court of Spain declined to grant amnesty on Monday for Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who has been in exile since the failed secession attempt of Catalonia in 2017, according to AFP. The arrest warrant against Puigdemont remains outstanding.
In its decision, the court noted that the lower court’s Judge Pablo Llarena issued a ruling in which he declared amnesty not applicable for the embezzlement offense in the case against former President of the Catalan Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont.
On May 30, the Spanish Parliament passed an amnesty law for supporters of Catalan’s independence, a price that Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was forced to pay to remain in power in November. Two Catalan independence parties had conditioned their support for him, demanding this measure in return.
The law was enacted on June 11. The legislators’ objective was for the justice system to promptly begin annulling the arrest warrants against independence supporters who had fled abroad, pending litigation of appeals of the law, a process that could take months or even years.
Over four hundred individuals are being prosecuted or have been convicted for offenses related to the Catalonia independence bid in 2017. Adjudicating each one on a case-by-case basis poses a challenging task for the courts.
The amnesty law was supposed to facilitate the return of exiled independence supporters, including Puigdemont, the former president of the Catalan regional government during the events of 2017. Charged with offenses of embezzlement, disobedience, and terrorism, Puigdemont had hoped to return to Spain promptly after the law was enacted.
The Supreme Court ruled that the amnesty law applies to the offense of disobedience, but that the “conduct” attributed to Puigdemont and two other independence supporters (embezzlement) “fully falls within the two exceptions provided by the law.”
The judge had concluded that Puigdemont had sought personal gain and had an impact on the financial interests of the European Union, rendering amnesty inapplicable in his view. Therefore, the Supreme Court upheld the arrest warrant “only for the offense of embezzlement, not for disobedience,” according to the order. The separate terrorism charge against Puigdemont is being adjudicated in another case and was not addressed in this ruling.