Spain’s Top Court Clears Path for Puigdemont’s Return

Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday that the country’s 2024 amnesty law applies to embezzlement charges stemming from Catalonia’s 2017 independence bid, prompting a Supreme Court judge to lift the decade-old arrest warrant against exiled former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, clearing a path for his return from Belgium ahead of a snap general election set for Nov 29.³⁵⁸

The ruling

The Constitutional Court approved, by seven votes to five along progressive-conservative lines, an appeal filed by Dolors Bassa, a former Catalan minister convicted of embezzlement, against the Supreme Court’s earlier refusal to apply the amnesty law to offences linked to the independence process.⁵⁷

Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena responded within hours, declaring the arrest warrants against Puigdemont and two former ministers, Toni Comín and Lluís Puig, ineffective “with immediate effect and until a further express judicial ruling,” saying he was “acting while awaiting full study of the Constitutional Court ruling.”⁸⁵

Spanish legal sources cautioned that lifting the warrants does not amount to a final decision on amnesty; withdrawing the orders neither extinguishes criminal liability nor settles outstanding legal questions, and Llarena must still determine next steps once he has examined the full judgment.⁵

Constitutional Court president Cándido Conde-Pumpido’s draft judgment held that the Supreme Court’s earlier reasoning amounted to an “expansive interpretation, contrary to the spirit and purpose of the legislation,” which he said “turns the exception into the rule.”⁵

Political fallout

The decision lands amid a deepening rift between Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist-led government and Junts per Catalunya, Puigdemont’s party, which withdrew its backing for the minority government after accusing Sánchez of “unfulfilled promises,” including delivering amnesty for its leader.³⁴

Junts lawmakers joined the conservative People’s Party and Vox in rejecting government housing decrees, after which Sánchez called a snap general election for Nov 29. Opinion polls currently show Junts trailing and the People’s Party in the lead.⁴⁵

Sánchez welcomed the ruling, saying, “We should celebrate that this also helps Catalan society, as it has been demanding throughout this time.”³

The amnesty law, negotiated in 2023 between the Socialist Party and Catalan separatist groups in return for their parliamentary backing, has already benefited roughly 400 people tied to the independence campaign and remains a hallmark policy of Sánchez’s tenure.³⁴⁵

Eight years in exile

Puigdemont fled to Belgium in October 2017, after leading the Catalan regional government during a banned independence referendum that triggered Spain’s worst political crisis in decades, and has remained there under arrest warrant since.²⁶⁷

He made a brief, unannounced return to Barcelona in August 2024, appearing near the Catalan Parliament during Salvador Illa’s investiture before disappearing ahead of the vote that installed Illa as the region’s president.²⁷

According to the Guardian, nine of Puigdemont’s colleagues were jailed for up to 13 years over the 2017 push, though all were released within three years.¹

A changed Catalonia

The Guardian reports that Catalonia has shifted markedly since 2017. Illa, who previously served as Madrid’s health minister throughout the pandemic, now leads the PSC, making it the first non-nationalist party to run Catalonia since 1980, even as support for independence–never topping half the population–has settled in the low 40s.¹

The region’s population has also changed: Barcelona now counts 32 percent of residents as immigrants representing 118 nationalities, with half of the city’s 12-35 age group foreign-born, while Catalonia’s overall foreign-born population rose from 13.8 percent in 2017 to 18.7 percent. The Guardian also notes 82 percent of 18-30 year olds in Catalonia still live with their parents.¹

These changes have helped fuel support for Aliança Catalana, a hard-right nationalist movement whose leader declared that “there isn’t room for everyone in Catalonia,” a stark departure from former regional president Jordi Pujol’s earlier view that “a Catalan was anyone who lived and worked in Catalonia.”¹