this week the PSOE and the pro-independence parties have accelerated negotiations to close on time, as part of a pact to invest Pedro Sánchez, an agreement to approve an amnesty law, the terms of which are being set since two months ago In other words, the facts that will be included in the rule, the term that will be defined and the crimes and causes affected. From what emerges from the negotiations, it seems that the PSOE, ERC and Junts agree that the period to be amnestied includes from January 1, 2013 until the law is approved, and that the facts are subscribed to process, including both the consultation of 9-N 2014 promoted by Artur Mas as president of the Generalitat, and the referendum of 1 October 2017 with Carles Puigdemont at the helm. Oriol Junqueras confirmed this in a radio interview on Friday.
Where there seems to be a stumbling block that keeps the negotiation stuck, mainly by Junts, is in the scope of amnesty to some people for reasons not directly related to the process. The socialists are reluctant to include people prosecuted for corruption issues, which do not have a clear link with the pro-independence challenge. However, there are names and causes that by now it is clear that they will not disappear when the agreement is finally signed and a joint proposal is presented with all the negotiating parties, including Sumar.
The text that is being closed foresees that all the open cases whose origin is the preparation, organization or consequences of both the 9-N and the 1-O will be annulled. It is estimated that they will be able to benefit about three hundred criminal defendants, to which are added more than fifty policemen and those who have accounting and administrative affairs, mainly those of the Court of Auditors.
The Supreme
Puigdemont and Junqueras as spearheads
The focus of this law, the proposal of which should be closed in the next few days, is located in the future of former president Carles Puigdemont, in Belgium since 2017. He currently has a national summons and search warrant, waiting for the trial judge, Pablo Llarena, to reactivate the warrants. The big question is whether, once the law comes into force, the Junts leader will be able to return to Catalonia.
Like any law, the entry into force will not be automatic either, but each judge will have to act ex officio or at the request of a party so that within two months it is resolved, since the procedure would be considered "urgent" . In open cases, the bonds that have been imposed will be closed and returned, as these are precautionary measures, which will be lifted.
In the case of summons and search and arrest warrants, they will also be automatically lifted. This means that Puigdemont and the other former councilors who left Catalonia after the unilateral declaration of independence on October 27, 2017 could return, as the arrest warrants would be deactivated. However, from the publication of the law in the Official State Gazette (BOE), it will be up to them to move the file to the judges, who will ultimately be the ones who will have to apply it.
In the case of those already convicted, such as the former vice-president of the Generalitat and leader of the ERC, Oriol Junqueras, the penalties will disappear, even the disqualifications, and, therefore, the criminal records will be erased. Since the nine convicted in the trial for the crime of sedition were pardoned, their prison sentence has already been extinguished. They were released from prison in 2021, but the pardon was partial and the disqualification remained intact. With the amnesty, this disqualification will be removed, so that the president of ERC could stand for election again. However, the courts can raise a question of the law's unconstitutionality before the Constitutional Court (TC), which in practice would paralyze the entire procedure until the guarantee body pronounces itself.
Terrorism
Democratic Tsunami and CDR, within a favorable framework
ERC leaders affirm that the amnesty pact signed with the PSOE explicitly states that the cases that are being followed in the National Hearing on the Democratic Tsunami and the CDRs of the Judes operation will be amnestied, despite the fact that the socialists, according to sources aware of the negotiation, they had serious objections to amnesty crimes of terrorism such as those that the judge of the National Court Manuel García Castellón attributes to about twenty investigated between the two cases. However, ERC sources say that it has finally been included in the article that terrorism crimes could be amnestied as long as they do not involve injuries or an attack resulting in death, extremes that do not occur in any case.
In this context of constant negotiations, the Criminal Chamber of the National Court has confirmed the opening of an oral trial for Operation Jude for crimes of belonging to a terrorist organization and possession, storage and manufacture of inflammable explosive substances or devices of a terrorist nature. Once the law is approved, those prosecuted will be granted amnesty and will not have to sit in the dock.
Regarding Democratic Tsunami, the platform that instigated the riots in Catalonia in response to the Supreme Court ruling that condemned the leaders of the process for sedition, García Castellón investigates who created that movement, the ideologues and the financiers. It affects ten other people and could end up splashing the general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira, especially after the report that the Civil Guard delivered to the judge on Thursday in which she was directly identified as the "political coordinator" of Tsunami.
TSJC before the process
The organizers of the 1-O, the causes of the court 13
As a result of the 1-O, several cases were initiated. The main one came from the court of inquiry number 13 of Barcelona, which started an investigation to find the organizers and planners of the referendum. The main defendants are the two former high officials of the Generalitat Josep María Jové, president of the ERC national council 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 High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), seven and six years in prison are requested, respectively. They will also be covered by the amnesty.
Court of Accounts
Another request from the pro-independence parties
The agreement that is being completed could also annul the accounting cases opened for public money used irregularly for the 9-N or the 1-O. This is one of the claims of the pro-independence parties. Artur Mas already had to pay in solidarity with other defendants almost five million euros for the consultation in 2014. And for the external action, as well as for the expenses in the organization of the 1-O, the trial starts on November 17th. In this matter there are around thirty defendants, some 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 for the promotion of the process and for the organization of the referendum.
Policies l’1- O
An undesirable amnesty pending the final text
Agents of the National Police and Civil Guard will also be able to benefit from the law if it finally gets the go-ahead, despite the fact that it is rejected head-on from the majority police unions and associations, since they consider that they would be "equated with criminals". The law could provide criminal oblivion for about seventy agents, whenever they consider it. On the one hand there is the group of 27 police officers and civil guards who were prosecuted by a judge from Girona for crimes of injury during her intervention on October 1, 2017. The magistrate limited the case to minor crimes of injuries and ruled out that the agents acted on orders of violence from their superiors or that they 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 court of inquiry number 7 of Barcelona has put in the dock for the alleged "gratuitous" and "unnecessary" violence they used against the citizens.
The excluded
Borràs, the Pujols and the 3%, outside the pact; Buch, in suspense
In the section of the excluded is where there is more clash between the socialist side and those of Puigdemont. The exposition of the law is based on achieving coexistence in Catalonia and, therefore, putting a cross and a line after the process, but this does not mean freeing from their criminal charges those accused in matters that have nothing to do with it, such as the ex-president of the Parliament Laura Borras, convicted of handing out contracts; the Pujol family for its fortune, or the cause of 3% corruption, which sprinkles former CDC officials. On the other hand, former interior minister Miquel Buch, sentenced to four and a half years in prison for hiring a Mosso d'Esquadra to escort Puigdemont in Belgium, could indeed benefit from the measure.
