The Constitutional Court's ruling on the amnesty will leave Puigdemont in a legal limbo.

As expected, the Constitutional Court 's ruling on the Amnesty Law passed a year ago finds it compatible with the Spanish Constitution. It only partially upholds the appeal filed by 270 PP deputies, so everything seems to indicate that it will be approved by the plenary session on June 26, with a left-wing majority. However, the text released yesterday makes no mention of the crime of embezzlement , which the Supreme Court considers should not be amnestied. Fugitive Carles Puigdemont and his ERC party colleague, Oriol Junqueras, would thus be left in a legal limbo that would prevent the former from returning to Spain as a free man.

The legal experts consulted believe that the pro-independence leader would only receive a political amnesty, because the Supreme Court could try him for misappropriation of public funds if he decided to set foot in our country. Furthermore, there are another 20 appeals yet to be resolved by the court of guarantees: 14 from autonomous communities (13 governed by the People's Party (PP), plus Castilla-La Mancha, governed by the PSOE), one question of unconstitutionality from the Supreme Court, four from the High Court of Catalonia, and one from the Provincial Court of Madrid. The speed with which Cándido Conde Pumpido has acted will not, for the moment, facilitate the fulfillment of the promise given by Pedro Sánchez in exchange for the seven votes that allowed him to be sworn in as Prime Minister.

One of the most striking details of the report concerns the price Sánchez paid to the separatists to secure their votes, despite the fact that the day before the July 23, 2023, elections, the Socialist leader and several of his ministers insisted on the unconstitutionality of the pardon.

"The specific political objective that the legislator intends to achieve with the law is not a matter for this court," the draft states. The vice president of the Constitutional Court, Inmaculada Montalbán , who drafted the text, adds that "the legislator may do anything that the Constitution does not explicitly or implicitly prohibit" and that "amnesty is not a whim; seeking social cohesion is reasonable."

It doesn't address its political objective, but it does justify it, even claiming that it is an act of generosity by the State. It should not be forgotten that the preamble to the law outlined the political reasons for taking the step of erasing the crimes committed by separatists. The text also reflected all the pro-independence movement's victim-like stances regarding the State's response to the events of October 1, 2017, forgetting that the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) supported the PP government at the time in applying Article 155 of the Constitution. Sánchez made "a virtue of necessity" a year ago, and Count Pumpido has obediently followed his instructions.

The debate raised by the various appeals filed concerns the fact that the Constitution explicitly prohibits general pardons, and this justifies the prohibition of amnesty itself. However, the Constitutional Court emphasizes that the Constitution does not expressly prohibit it , and although pardons and amnesty may have points in common, "the legal framework that defines them and their legal effects are very different."

The motion will begin debate in plenary session on June 10th and will likely conclude on June 26th, when it will issue a ruling with the six left-wing judges voting in favor and the four right-wing judges voting against. Juan Carlos Campo, a minister in the coalition government between 2020 and 2021 and who signed the proposal to pardon the imprisoned pro-independence activists, had already announced his abstention in the debate and subsequent vote, with "an express and general assessment of the constitutional unfeasibility of an amnesty law." Conservative judge José María Macías, who has been challenged by the Prosecutor's Office, will also be unable to vote.

The government is awaiting a reaction from the pro-independence politician who fled Spain. He has been threatening Pedro Sánchez for months with withdrawing his support in the Congress of Deputies. In fact, the seven Junts deputies have rejected some of the PSOE's proposals and have prevented him from submitting the draft General State Budget for 2025. Incidentally, the Constitution establishes that the Executive is obliged to present the draft public accounts annually, even if it fails to secure the necessary support for its approval.

The secretary general of Junts, Jordi Turull, has been systematically attacking the judiciary for months, and just yesterday, before the draft of the Constitutional Court's ruling was released, he described the attitude of judges such as Pablo Llarena and Manuel Marchena regarding the application of the Amnesty Law as a "coup d'état." "We will end up winning, we will find justice in Europe," he added; "it will take time, but the toga nostra will be unmasked."

For his part, Puigdemont's lawyer, Gonzalo Boye (with several convictions under his belt), predicted yesterday that the former president of the Generalitat (Catalan government) will soon return to Catalonia and that "he's not worried about going to prison; he assumes the risks." This is yet another boast, because no one expects the leader of Junts to be willing to go to prison, considering that embezzlement is one of the exceptions contained in the Amnesty Law, according to the Supreme Court.

Junts can now pursue several paths. The first is to denounce the Socialists' failure to fulfill their agreement and resume threats to break up the coalition government. This has so far remained mere boasting, because they know they can gain more from a weak government willing to give in to all their blackmail than risk early elections that would hand power to Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

The second option, and also the most likely, is that they will continue their attacks on the justice system and force Pedro Sánchez to take a step toward whitewashing Puigdemont and the rest of the convicted separatists. They have been chasing a photo of both of them for months, and that could be their immediate objective. The narrative would be that the Prime Minister has no choice but to acknowledge the Supreme Court's injustice and is visiting the fugitive somewhere abroad to confirm the political amnesty for the independence process.

In recent months, Second Vice President Yolanda Díaz and Socialist Organization Secretary Santos Cerdán have posed with the leader of Junts on several occasions, although the latter is not currently in his best political form.

What the government has achieved with the leak of the Constitutional Court's ruling by the court itself is a respite from the front pages of newspapers and radio and television talk shows, which have been publishing and commenting on countless scandals affecting the Socialists for weeks. The latest is the recordings released in which the Socialist activist and former senior official in several public companies, Leire Díez , mobilized to seek news against the Civil Guard's UCO (Union of the Civil Guard), which is leading the judicial investigations affecting Pedro Sánchez's family, the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, and the party's former number two, José Luis Ábalos.

For the first time in Pedro Sánchez's seven-year administration, the usual loudspeakers at La Moncloa and Ferraz had fallen silent, as if fearing that an attack on Santos Cerdán's alleged "plumber girl" could trigger new revelations.