Justice grants amnesty to the five 1-O trustees after two years of blockage

The amnesty law has closed this Wednesday another of the cases that remained open since the 'procés'. The Criminal Court number 11 of Barcelona has amnestied the five members of the Electoral Syndicate of 1-O and has decreed the free dismissal of the procedure that kept them pending a second trial.

The resolution declares their criminal responsibility for the crimes of disobedience and usurpation of public functions extinguished. The file includes lawyer Marc Marsal, professor Jordi Matas, lawyer Marta Alsina, former minister and former ERC deputy Tània Verge and current Junts deputy in Congress Josep Pagès.

The decision comes more than two years after the law came into force, despite the defenses requesting its application from day one. Changes in the political situation of some defendants and successive discussions about which court should resolve kept the file trapped between different instances.

A case open since 2017

The Parliament appointed the five syndics on September 7, 2017, to integrate the body that was to supervise the independence consultation. That syndicate assumed functions similar to those of an electoral board, such as resolving claims, monitoring the development of the vote, and validating its results.

Their activity lasted barely 19 days. The five resigned after the Constitutional Court suspended the referendum laws and warned them of coercive fines of 12,000 euros daily if they continued to exercise their functions.

The Prosecutor's Office brought them to trial considering that they had disobeyed the resolutions of the Constitutional Court and assumed public powers that did not correspond to them. In 2021 they were acquitted because the court understood that it had not been proven that they continued to act after receiving the warnings.

The acquittal lasted short. The Audiencia de Barcelona annulled that sentence and ordered a repeat of the trial at the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which demanded two years and nine months in prison for each defendant. The new hearing never took place.

First, doubts arose about the jurisdiction of the court due to the special legal protection of Verge, then a member of the Parliament, and Pagès, a member of Congress. The case went through the High Court of Justice of Catalonia, which refused to take it on and asked for a better specification of the accusations. Verge's departure from the Parliament at the beginning of 2026 cleared part of that labyrinth. The court recovered the procedure, requested the position of the Public Prosecutor's Office, and the Public Prosecutor's Office finally reported in favor of granting the amnesty.

The action fully fits the law

The magistrate considers that both the dates and the facts attributed to the trustees fall within the scope provided by the norm. Their designation and their brief activity were directly related to the preparation of the referendum held on October 1, 2017.

The law includes actions aimed at organizing the independence consultations and possible crimes of disobedience committed against the resolutions of the Constitutional Court. The case thus brought together two of the assumptions expressly included by the legislator.

The order puts an end to a procedure that had survived for almost nine years, even after a first acquittal. The five are no longer awaiting a new trial and the case is definitively archived, pending any appeals that the parties may file.

European endorsement puts amnesty back on the agenda

The resolution is known less than a week after the Court of Justice of the European Union backed the compatibility of the amnesty law with community law. The ruling dismissed that the norm itself harms the financial interests of the Union or violates European legislation against terrorism.

The CJEU ruling has weakened a good part of the arguments used to delay its application, although it left the specific examination of each case in the hands of the Spanish courts.

The archiving of the trustees' case now offers one of the first judicial movements after that pronouncement. It also puts amnesty back at the center of political negotiation, with Junts demanding that pending resolutions be issued without further delays.

The situation of Carles Puigdemont remains different. The national arrest warrant remains in force because the Supreme Court has refused to apply the amnesty to the crime of embezzlement attributed to him, a decision appealed before the Constitutional Court.

The former president cannot yet return to Spain without risk of being arrested. The Constitutional Court keeps his appeal for protection pending after having refused to provisionally suspend the order, while the courts continue to resolve the 'procés' cases that remain open.