A six-year pursuit focused on the same target, Carles Puigdemont, now appears to be nearing its end. With immunity from Europe no longer in force since June 12, the day Puigdemont joined the Catalan Parliament as a deputy, and with a Spanish-law-driven amnesty that his pursuers disagree with, the very judges at the helm of the Supreme Court’s Second Chamber still hesitate to move. They have not yet supplemented the national arrest warrant issued on July 1 with a new European arrest warrant, and for now they seem content to maintain the existing output, as the saying goes, with a sheet of paper that offers little protection to their certainty.
What is happening? The argument that the European arrest warrant was paused in July 2023 while awaiting a decision from the European Union Court of Justice (ECJ) after Puigdemont’s appeal against the loss of immunity was rejected by the court that ruled on the matter at first instance, the General Court of the European Union. That appeal has since become moot because Puigdemont is no longer a member of the European Parliament. There is also no basis to claim that there is no request in the procedure, since Vox, the public prosecutor in the case, filed a request on July 4, a document this newspaper published.
Judicial sources consulted by this newspaper indicate that both person in charge of the case, judge Llarena, and the president of the chamber overseeing the amnesty questions, Marchena, do not want to risk losing control of Puigdemont’s current situation. They therefore limit themselves to maintaining, as they did on July 1, the national arrest order.
Losing control? If a new European arrest warrant were issued for embezzlement and executed, Puigdemont would be arrested abroad and the path toward extradition would open. The judges, though confident in the amnesty law’s unconstitutionality, recognize that Puigdemont has effectively been granted amnesty by the Spanish legislature. They also ignore what the Constitutional Court might decide in the near future, where several points of unconstitutionality will be raised by the Popular Party and Vox within the three-month window.
And if the Constitutional Court finds the amnesty constitutional? That would have consequences. If Puigdemont were imprisoned, and the amnesty were later recognized as valid, he could then file a complaint for illegal detention during the period of his incarceration, according to a judicial source.
Therefore, Llarena and Marchena must act with caution. If they push for a European warrant and Puigdemont is detained abroad, control over the case would shift away from them. Keeping the arrest order within Spain remains far more straightforward because Llarena wields full authority there. The moment Puigdemont sets foot in Spain, police can be ordered to arrest him and bring him before the judge, effectively Llarena in the Supreme Court. There, he can order pretrial detention or provisional release. The political, media, and judicial right will be watching every move by Llarena, so the rationale must be simple: Puigdemont appeared voluntarily, removing the risk of flight.
One might compare this to the Clara Ponsatí case from March 2023, also overseen by Judge Llarena. There are procedural grounds to consider, such as whether depriving Puigdemont of amnesty for embezzlement remains unresolved because the remedies for Puigdemont are still under consideration by the trial judge and the Supreme Court’s appellate chamber. The arrest warrant related to Puigdemont’s resistance to face justice. Now, with Puigdemont in the very seat of Spain’s Supreme Court under Llarena and Marchena, surrender would become the final outcome.
Thus, maintaining control of Puigdemont’s personal situation is crucial to avoid triggering a European arrest warrant. Still, Puigdemont must also consider the possibility of a longer period in prison, a duration comparable to the time required for the Constitutional Court to decide on amnesty-related appeals, six to ten months. In that window, Llarena could complete the summarizing instructions on embezzlement, issue a processing order, bring him to trial, and secure a verdict—potentially sending him back to prison once again.
All of this could unfold even before the Constitutional Court rules on the unconstitutionality challenges to the amnesty law raised by the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court and by the PP and Vox. In such a scenario, the government under Pedro Sánchez might once again approve a presidential pardon for Puigdemont.