PSOE and Junts have closed this Thursday a political agreement for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez that includes the future approval of an Amnesty law that, according to the statement in which it was made public, must “ensure full political, institutional and social normality.” as an essential requirement to address the challenges of the immediate future.” This law, the statement adds, "must include both those responsible and the citizens who, before and after the 2014 consultation and the 2017 referendum, have been the subject of decisions or judicial processes linked to these events."
While waiting to know its literality, some terms of the initiative are already known based on the information that the ERC negotiators already gave when they announced their investiture pact with the PSOE.
From what emerges from the negotiations, it seems that PSOE, ERC and Junts agree that the period to be amnestied runs from January 1, 2013 until the law is approved and that the facts are subscribed to the process, including both the consultation of 9-N 2014 promoted by Artur Mas as president of the Generalitat, like the referendum of October 1, 2017 with Carles Puigdemont at the helm. This was confirmed in a radio interview by Oriol Junqueras on Friday.
The text that is being closed provides that all open cases whose origin is the preparation, organization or consequences of both 9-N and 1-O will be annulled. It is estimated that around three hundred criminal defendants may benefit, to which are added more than fifty police officers and those with accounting and administrative matters, mainly those of the Court of Accounts.
The focus of this law is without a doubt what is going to happen to the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, in Belgium since 2017. Currently, a national search and arrest warrant is pending against him, waiting for the investigating judge of the process, Pablo Llarena. , reactivate the Euroorders. The big question is whether once the law comes into force, the leader of Junts will be able to return to Spain.
Like any law, this will not be automatic but rather each judge must act ex officio or at the request of a party so that it is resolved within a period of two months, as the procedure is considered “urgent.” In open cases, the bonds that have been imposed will be closed and returned as they are precautionary measures, which will be lifted.
In the case of search and capture and detention orders, they will also be automatically issued. This means that Puigdemont and the other former ministers who left Spain after the unilateral declaration of independence on October 27, 2017 could return to Spain once the arrest warrants are deactivated. However, these decisions could not be immediate because, as of the publication of the law in the Official State Gazette (BOE), the ball will be in the hands of the judges who will ultimately be the ones who must apply it.
In the case of those already convicted, such as the former vice president of the Generalitat and leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, the disqualification sentences would disappear and their criminal records would be erased. In 2021, the nine convicted by the Supreme Court were released from prison, but the pardon was partial and the disqualification remained intact. With the amnesty this will be eliminated, so that the president of ERC will be able to run again in elections.
However, the courts can raise a question of unconstitutionality of the law before the Constitutional Court (TC), which in practice would paralyze the entire procedure until the guarantee body takes a position.
ERC leaders maintain that the pact closed with the PSOE for the amnesty explicitly states that the matters being followed in the National Court on Democratic Tsunami and the CDR of Operation Judas will be amnestied, despite the fact that the socialists, according to sources familiar with the negotiation, had serious reservations about amnesty for terrorism crimes such as those that the judge of the National Court Manuel García Castellón maintains against twenty people investigated between the two cases, among them Marta Rovira and Puigdemont himself.
As a result of 1-O, several cases were initiated. The main one was the one that came from the 13th investigative court of Barcelona, which began an investigation to find the organizers and planners of the referendum. The main defendants are the two former senior officials of the Generalitat, Josep María Jové, president of the National Council of ERC and the Parliamentary group, and Lluís Salvadó, president of the port of Barcelona, considered the architects of the process. For both, pending trial before the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), seven and six years in prison are requested, respectively. They would also be covered by the amnesty.
The agreement that is being finalized could also annul the accounting cases opened by public money used irregularly for 9-N or 1-O. This is one of the demands of the independentistas. Artur Mas already had to pay jointly with other defendants almost five million euros for the 2014 consultation. And due to the foreign action, as well as the expenses in the organization of 1-O, the trial begins on November 17. There are around thirty defendants in this matter, several of them also with other criminal cases. The Prosecutor's Office demands the return of 3.4 million euros, which is what is estimated to have been used from the Catalan public coffers to promote the process, as well as for the organization of the referendum.
Agents of the National Police and the Civil Guard may also benefit from the law if it finally sees the green light, despite the fact that the majority police unions and associations reject it outright, considering that they would be "equated with criminals." The law could contemplate criminal oblivion for around seventy agents, as long as they consider it. On the one hand, there is the group of 27 police officers and civil guards who were prosecuted by a Girona judge for crimes of injury during her intervention on October 1, 2017. The judge limited the case to minor crimes of injury, ruling out that the agents acted with orders of violence from their superiors or committed crimes of torture and against the moral integrity of voters. On the other hand, there are the 45 national police officers that the head of the investigating court number 7 of Barcelona has placed in the dock for the alleged “gratuitous” and “unnecessary” violence they used against citizens.
