Three weeks after its adoption by Spanish deputies, the amnesty law for Catalan separatists is the subject of a fierce fight in the courts which is delaying its entry into force for the people concerned.
The text gives magistrates two months to take “as a priority and urgency the relevant decisions” to apply the amnesty, decisions which would not be annulled if the law was the subject of an appeal before the Spanish Constitutional Court or the European justice.
Voted on May 30 by Spanish deputies, the amnesty is the price that socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had to pay to be returned to power in November thanks to the support of the two Catalan independence parties, who demanded this measure in return.
The objective of the legislators was that the courts would immediately begin to cancel the arrest warrants targeting the separatists who had fled abroad and that these cancellations would remain valid pending the examination of the appeals filed against the law, which could take months or even years.
But with more than 400 people prosecuted or convicted for offenses linked to Catalonia’s 2017 independence attempt or to the events that followed or preceded it, the task promises to be difficult for the courts, who must decide case by case.
“The Masters of Law”
“Governors and legislators are the masters of the law, but lawyers are the masters of the Law,” recently recalled Alfons López Tena, lawyer and former pro-independence deputy in the Catalan Parliament, in an article published by the online media ConfiLegal.
For this jurist, if a judge considers “that the law, or one of its articles, violates European legislation, he has full authority to decide not to apply it, without the need for an appeal or a preliminary question”.
The main leader affected by the amnesty is Carles Puigdemont, president of the Catalan regional government during the events of 2017, who has since lived in exile in Belgium to escape legal prosecution.
Targeted by an arrest warrant, Mr. Puigdemont hoped to be able to return quickly to Spain after the adoption of the law. But for the moment, his situation has not changed for the Spanish justice system, which has indicted him for “embezzlement” and “disobedience” and for his role in the riots that occurred in Catalonia in 2019, which the judge in charge of the investigation assimilates to an offense of “terrorism”.
At this stage, the magistrates were content to suspend certain appearances in these cases and to ask the parties to say whether the law is, in their opinion, applicable to the people involved. The arrest warrants remain in force.
Impatience
The Attorney General of the State, Álvaro García Ortiz, said he was in favor of the amnesty applying to all crimes without exception, but the four prosecutors in charge of the procedure against Carles Puigdemont were of the opposite opinion .
Meeting on Tuesday, the General Prosecutor’s Office decided, by 19 votes for and 17 against, to support the thesis of Mr. García Ortiz and thus unify the position of all the prosecutors in favor of a very broad application of the amnesty, as desired by both the government and the Catalan separatists.
But in practice, it is the judges who will have the last word, because the “amnesty law for institutional, political and social normalization in Catalonia”, according to its official name, provides that “the magistrates and the courts” will have to decide of “its application to each concrete case”.
The Catalan separatists consider these delays unjustified and do not hide their impatience.
Mr. Puigdemont’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, wrote to the Spanish Court of Auditors to ask it to cancel “without further delays or legal procrastination” the procedure initiated against his client for the use of public funds. in the process of independence, the basis of his indictment for “embezzlement”.
The government, insisted Tuesday its spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, “has defended since the first day” this amnesty law as a way “to move towards coexistence in Catalonia” after the trauma of 2017, one of the most serious political crises in Spain since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975.