The Plenary Session of the Constitutional Court has approved by seven votes to five the sentence that protects the former Catalan councilor Dolors Bassa for violation of fundamental rights in the denial of application of the amnesty. The president of the body, Judge Cándido Conde-Pumpido, was the speaker of the ruling.
This sentence inescapably paves the way for the return of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to Catalonia, in the middle of the electoral period, nine years after he fled Spain for fear of ending up in prison after his Government unilaterally declared the independence of said autonomy.
In fact, the instructor of the process, Judge Pablo Llarena, as a consequence of this decision, has immediately lifted the national arrest warrant against Puigdemont. Llarena has decided to review ex officio the personal measures imposed on the Junts leader taking into account the new situation and the right to freedom recognized by article 17 of the Constitution.
In an order, the 1-O instructor explains that, although the full text of the sentence referring to Dolors Bassa is not yet available, knowledge of which will be necessary to determine its scope with respect to Puigdemont, the substantial coincidence of the facts and the controversial legal issue allows us to appreciate, without anticipating a definitive conclusion, that the constitutional pronouncement may affect the basis of the arrest warrants maintained by his order of July 1, 2024. This supervening circumstance justifies, for the magistrate, "to immediately review its execution during the time necessary to fully understand the amparo ruling and decide on its consequences."
Bassa's appeal is the first protection that the court of guarantees considers against the Supreme Court's decision not to grant amnesty for the crime of embezzlement of public funds from 1-O. The progressive majority of the TC has once again been imposed in the decision, thanks to the votes of the judges Conde-Pumpido, Inmaculada Montalbán, Ramón Sáez, María Luisa Balaguer, Juan Carlos Campo, María Luisa Segoviano and Laura Díez. For their part, the judges of the conservative group Enrique Arnaldo, Concepción Espejel, Ricardo Enríquez, José María Macias and César Tolosa will formulate dissenting opinions.
Bassa's sentence was the first to be voted on by the members of the TC after the magistrate of the conservative bloc José María Macías decided yesterday to withdraw his presentation on the former councilor and member of Junts Jordi Turull. Turull's request for protection has also been deliberated this Tuesday by the Plenary and, finally, the presentation of Conde-Pumpido herself will also take over, according to legal sources.
The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court refused to grant amnesty for the embezzlement of funds from 1-O because the Amnesty Law itself excluded that appropriation of funds that was carried out with the purpose of obtaining a financial benefit. However, the Constitutional Court has considered that this legal interpretation is contrary to the spirit of the Law.
Bassa's presentation, which will be briefly retouched, maintains that, when the legislator left out of the application of the Amnesty Law that embezzlement whose purpose was "to obtain a personal benefit of a patrimonial nature", he issued "a mandate to exclude conduct that, due to its final purpose, has weakened or broken its causal link with the secessionist purposes covered in the material scope of the law." The ruling maintains that, "with the rules of logic and common sense", this is the only possible interpretation of the Amnesty Law taking into account "its spirit and purpose, as well as its own genesis."
The court of guarantees considers that the Supreme Court violated article 24.1 of the Constitution - right to effective judicial protection - in relation to the right to political representation and the criminal legality of the leaders of the process.
