The Supreme Court has granted a period of five days to the parties to present allegations regarding the sentence issued by the Constitutional Court, a resolution that gives free rein to apply the amnesty both to the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont as well as to other leaders of the procés, including Oriol Junqueras.
The Constitutional Court's ruling was approved by a majority of seven magistrates against five, who presented dissenting individual votes. The court considers that the embezzlement committed within the framework of the procés can be covered by the Amnesty Law and orders the Supreme Court to review its decision on Dolors Bassa. This resolution now sets the criterion that the high court must take into account when studying the situation of the other leaders of the procés affected by the same issue.
Once the decision of the court of guarantees was notified, both Judge Pablo Llarena and the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court took this step and asked the Prosecutor's Office and the defenses to "formulate the allegations that suit their right", in a move that follows a similar formula to that used by the Court of Accounts and the National High Court after the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that endorsed the amnesty law.
The Constitutional Court's order on Dolors Bassa's embezzlement
However, in this case, the Constitutional Court's resolution goes a step further and expressly addresses the Supreme Court to issue "a new pronouncement in which the crime of embezzlement against former minister Dolors Bassa is declared amnestied."
In the case of Dolors Bassa, the Constitutional Court's ruling goes beyond establishing a general doctrine on the application of amnesty to embezzlement. The court expressly orders the Supreme Court to issue a new pronouncement in which the crime of embezzlement for which the former minister was convicted is declared amnestied, and establishes that this action must be carried out with "preferential and urgent" character. This is a direct instruction to the Supreme Court that had already been anticipated by the president of the Constitutional Court, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, who had defended that the ruling should be "clear, precise and forceful" to guarantee the application of the law.
Llarena lifts Puigdemont's arrest warrant
In fact, the first move was adopted this Tuesday by Judge Pablo Llarena, when he immediately lifted the arrest warrant issued against Carles Puigdemont, although the former Catalan president later stated that he does not contemplate returning to Spain until the full application of the amnesty.
Puigdemont, for his part, assured this Tuesday from Waterloo that he does not plan to return immediately and linked his return to the effective application of the amnesty. In his institutional statement, the former Catalan president celebrated the Constitutional Court's decision and affirmed that it represents a defeat for the public powers that, in his opinion, had prevented or delayed the application of the law, although he also maintained that "today nothing is solved" in the relationship between Catalonia and Spain and that amnesty does not in itself constitute the solution to the political conflict.
The magistrate did not yet apply the amnesty to the three fugitives, arguing that it is essential to know the full content of the sentence beforehand, a position also shared by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, which must rule on its application to the leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, and to former ministers Jordi Turull and Raül Romeva.
