Spanish Supreme Court refuses to grant Puigdemont amnesty despite EU court ruling

Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena, who is overseeing the case stemming from Catalonia’s failed independence bid, has rejected requests from Puigdemont and his former regional minister Toni Comín to have the alleged offence of misappropriation of public funds covered by the amnesty.

The judge has also maintained the national arrest warrants against both men, meaning Puigdemont would still risk arrest if he returned to Spain.

The decision comes two months after the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that Spain’s amnesty law did not breach EU law and rejected one of the arguments previously used by the Supreme Court to exclude Puigdemont from its provisions. ALSO READ: European top court rules Spain’s Catalan amnesty complies with EU law.

Llarena has now accepted that part of the European court’s reasoning, but concluded that a separate legal obstacle remains.

Why the EU ruling has not changed Puigdemont’s position

When the amnesty law came into force in 2024, the Supreme Court refused to apply it to the alleged misuse of public money connected with the Catalan independence referendum of 1 October 2017. ALSO READ: Controversial Catalan amnesty law gets final approval in Spanish Congress.

Llarena based that decision on two separate grounds. The first was that the alleged diversion of public funds could have affected the European Union’s financial interests. The second was that Puigdemont and others had obtained a form of personal financial benefit by using public money for expenditure that they would otherwise have had to meet themselves.

The CJEU ruling on 16 July effectively removed the first argument, concluding that the events surrounding the attempted secession of Catalonia had not caused financial harm to the EU.

Llarena acknowledged this in his latest ruling, but said the European judgment did not affect the Supreme Court’s separate interpretation concerning personal financial benefit.

The judge stressed that his refusal to grant the latest amnesty requests was not based on the European court’s judgment being irrelevant, but because its consequences did not extend to the other reason on which the Supreme Court had based its original decision.

Under the amnesty legislation, certain cases involving the misuse of public funds can be excluded where they involve personal financial gain.

The Supreme Court has interpreted the money spent by the Catalan government on organising the 2017 independence referendum as providing such a benefit to Puigdemont and other members of his government.

Constitutional Court could prove decisive

Attention will now turn increasingly towards Spain’s Constitutional Court, which upheld the overall constitutionality of the amnesty law in June 2025 but has yet to settle the specific dispute over how it should apply to the independence leaders accused or convicted of misusing public funds. ALSO READ: Amnesty bill registered in Spanish Congress – full details. 

Llarena noted that the Constitutional Court’s judgments to date ‘have not resolved the individual application’ now being considered by the Supreme Court.

Those rulings, he said, have not overturned the Supreme Court’s interpretation of what constitutes personal financial benefit. At the same time, he acknowledged that they ‘do not constitute a specific validation’ of that interpretation and said it was not possible to ‘anticipate the outcome of the pending appeals for constitutional protection’.

The Constitutional Court is expected to begin considering appeals lodged by former Catalan independence leaders on 22 October.

According to El País, the Supreme Court intends to wait for the Constitutional Court’s first ruling in this area, concerning an appeal by former Catalan minister and former Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) secretary-general Jordi Turull.

Should the Constitutional Court accept Turull’s appeal, Llarena is reportedly expected to review Puigdemont’s position on his own initiative rather than wait for a ruling on the former Catalan president’s individual appeal.

Arrest warrant remains in force

For the moment, however, Llarena has also rejected requests to withdraw the national arrest warrants against Puigdemont and Comín, who have been based outside Spain since the aftermath of the 2017 independence referendum. ALSO READ: Three Mossos officers suspended following Puigdemont’s escape from Spain.

The judge nevertheless made clear that the precautionary measures are not necessarily permanent.

His ruling ‘does not declare the measures to be unreviewable, nor does it turn the absence of an amnesty into sufficient justification for any precautionary restriction’, he said.

‘It is limited to rejecting their lifting for the reasons now put forward, without excluding the examination that may be appropriate in other specific circumstances.’

The wording leaves open the possibility that Puigdemont’s legal position — and consequently his ability to return to Spain without facing arrest — could change depending on forthcoming Constitutional Court decisions.

Llarena also rejected requests for the case to be transferred to the High Court of Justice of Catalonia or to courts in Barcelona.

He further dismissed an attempt to have the proceedings closed on the grounds of the non bis in idem principle, which prevents a person being punished twice for the same conduct. The argument was based on the existence of separate accounting proceedings before Spain’s Court of Auditors.

Court of Auditors also rejects appeals

In a separate development, the Court of Auditors has rejected appeals lodged by Puigdemont and several other former Catalan officials seeking the immediate application of the amnesty to proceedings concerning the alleged diversion of public money for the 2017 referendum and the Catalan government’s overseas independence campaign.

The appeals followed the July CJEU ruling and challenged a previous decision by the Court of Auditors to ask the parties involved in the case to submit their arguments on the implications of the European judgment.

Puigdemont had sought an immediate ruling declaring the actions covered by the proceedings to be amnestied and extinguishing the accounting liability being claimed against those involved.

He and former Catalan ministers including Toni Comín, Clara Ponsatí and Lluís Puig also sought the removal of precautionary measures and the return of money or guarantees deposited in connection with the proceedings.

Former Catalan vice-president and Esquerra Republicana (ERC) leader Oriol Junqueras, together with former ministers Raül Romeva and Dolors Bassa, made similar requests.

The Court of Auditors rejected all the appeals, concluding that its decision to seek submissions from the parties neither failed to comply with nor contradicted the CJEU judgment.

The latest decisions therefore leave Puigdemont’s immediate legal position essentially unchanged: the Supreme Court continues to regard the alleged misuse of public funds as outside the scope of the amnesty, and the national warrant for his arrest remains in force.

The next potentially decisive development is now likely to come from Spain’s Constitutional Court as it begins examining the individual appeals of the former Catalan independence leaders.

Background to Catalan political conflict

Nine Catalan politicians and activists were jailed for between 9-13 years by the Spanish Supreme Court in October 2019, convicted of sedition and misuse of public funds for their role in the 2017 illegal referendum, with the verdicts causing widespread protests across Catalonia. In June 2021, the nine walked free from prison, following pardons granted by the government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, but they remained banned from holding public office. 

In late 2022, Spain passed a controversial criminal code reform that downgraded the two charges used against them, abolishing sedition and replacing it with that of aggravated public disorder, and also reducing the penalty for misuse of public funds.

Carles Puigdemont had led the government of Catalonia when it staged the referendum banned by Madrid and the courts, which was followed by a short-lived declaration of independence. He then fled to Brussels to avoid prosecution in Spain, and became an MEP.  

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