Spanish judge rejects Puigdemont appeal, confirms amnesty law does not apply

Spain’s Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena confirmed on Tuesday (10 September) that he will not apply the controversial amnesty law to Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, citing an exemption for embezzlement of public funds.

Llarena rejected – as experts had expected – the appeal lodged by Puigdemont, leader of the right-wing separatist movement Together for Catalonia (JxCat), against a previous decision by the judge in the same vein.

Puigdemont, who made a brief and controversial visit to Barcelona on 8 August, has since then been back in Waterloo, near Brussels, where he went into self-exile after the events of 1 October 2017, waiting to be able to return definitively to Spain under the amnesty law.

In his formal reply to Puigdemont’s lawyers, the Spanish judge rejected the arguments put forward by the separatist leader and two of his former regional ministers, Lluis Puig and Antoni Comín, for the amnesty to be applied to them.

However, the three separatist leaders have the possibility of appealing the decision before the Supreme Court’s Appeals Chamber.

In his argument, the judge stressed that the amnesty law, which came into force in June, excludes crimes of embezzlement in cases where the subject acts with “the purpose of obtaining a personal benefit of a patrimonial nature”.

The judge concluded that this leaves the three defendants outside the scope of the law, as they “decided to charge the public funds provided by taxpayers for the cost” of the illegal referendum of 1 October 2017.

According to the judge, Puigdemont and his then government took a decision for which they had no legal competences.

The PP’s judicial offensive

Puigdemont reacted harshly to the decision, denouncing the judge’s “grotesque arbitrariness” while calling for the amnesty law to be applied to him as agreed by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) Euractiv´s partner EFE had reported.

In this June decision, the TJSC decided to apply the amnesty law to former interior minister Miquel Buch and Puigdemont’s former bodyguard Luis Escolà, both of whom had been sentenced to four and a half years in prison in connection with the 2017 events.

The Catalan high court based its decision on the fact that the two did not use public funds to enrich themselves personally, but for the broader Catalan separatist movement.

The amnesty law was presented by the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez (PSOE/S&D), as a political tool to foster ‘reconciliation’ between Madrid and Catalonia.

The law was the centrepiece of a wider deal struck by Sánchez in exchange for separatist support for his government, that also allowed the leader of the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), Salvador Illa, to govern the Generalitat

The Spanish People’s Party (Partido Popular/EPP), the main opposition force, and the far-right VOX party, the third-largest party in parliament, consider the law unconstitutional. Before the summer, they announced together a broad judicial offensive against it, including before the EU Court of Justice.

Several PP regional heads of government also filed appeals on Monday (9 September) before the Spanish Constitutional Court in an attempt to strike down the law.

Sánchez also faces opposition to the law from within his own party. The president of the autonomous community of Castilla la Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, has described the law as “unconstitutional,” arguing that it “breaks with the principle of equality between citizens”.