Spain’s Supreme Court keeps Carles Puigdemont outside the Catalan amnesty

Amnesty request rejected

Spain’s Supreme Court has refused to apply the country’s Catalan amnesty law to former regional president Carles Puigdemont’s alleged misuse of public money and has left his national arrest warrant in force. Investigating judge Pablo Llarena issued the decision after Puigdemont asked the court to reconsider his position following a July judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Puigdemont led Catalonia during the banned 2017 independence referendum and the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence. He later moved to Belgium and remains outside Spain. The surviving warrant is national rather than European, meaning he faces arrest if he enters Spanish territory but is not automatically subject to detention elsewhere in the European Union.

Why the EU judgment was not decisive

The EU court held in July that Union law does not generally prevent Spain’s amnesty legislation and rejected the proposition that the Catalan secession effort by itself harmed the European Union’s financial interests. That removed one of the arguments previously used to deny amnesty for alleged embezzlement. The EU judgment nevertheless left national judges responsible for applying the law to individual defendants.

Llarena concluded that a second and separate ground remained: the allegation that public spending connected to the referendum was intended to produce a personal financial benefit by relieving organisers of expenses they otherwise would have borne. Euronews reported that the judge also refused to close the case under the rule against double punishment and rejected requests to transfer proceedings to courts in Catalonia.

A continuing political fault line

The ruling preserves one of the most consequential unresolved cases from the 2017 crisis. Spain adopted the amnesty legislation as part of an effort to reduce political and institutional conflict in Catalonia, but its application has remained contested across the country’s courts. Puigdemont’s legal position may still change through pending Constitutional Court proceedings or a later review of the warrant. For now, however, the decision blocks his risk-free return and keeps the dispute over the amnesty’s boundaries at the centre of Spanish coalition politics.