Overview
- Spain's Constitutional Court found that alleged misuse of public funds by Catalan separatists does not amount to personal enrichment, undoing the Supreme Court's key legal justification for keeping warrants and bans in place.
- That legal shift leaves the long-standing national and European arrest warrants tied to the embezzlement allegation without their principal basis and makes a return from nine years of exile in Belgium legally possible for Carles Puigdemont.
- The 2024 amnesty passed by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had pardoned convicted separatists in Spain but was not applied to Puigdemont because he was not convicted and the Supreme Court had relied on the personal-enrichment exception.
- Practical steps remain uncertain because Judge Pablo Llarena controls the formal withdrawal of warrants, and media reports say he could delay action for timing reasons related to the national election campaign.
- Even if Puigdemont returns, Catalan politics may not shift quickly because his party Junts has lost ground in polls to the newer Aliança Catalana, and next moves to watch are any formal withdrawal of warrants and when he might travel back.