Spain Lifts Arrest Warrant for Puigdemont, Nine Years After Catalonia’s Independence Vote

A judge of Spain’s Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted the national arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont, the former president of Catalonia who has lived in Belgium since leading the region’s 2017 independence effort. The order clears the way for him to return to Spain without being detained for the first time in nearly nine years.

Judge Pablo Llarena withdrew the warrants for Puigdemont and two of his former ministers, Antoni Comín and Lluís Puig, “with immediate effect and until a further express judicial ruling,” according to the Spanish judiciary’s official notice. He ordered the National Police, the Guardia Civil and Catalonia’s Mossos d’Esquadra to refrain from detaining any of the three on the basis of the old orders.

Llarena acted after Spain’s Constitutional Court upheld an appeal from former Catalan minister Dolors Bassa, whom the Supreme Court had refused amnesty for her embezzlement conviction. The embezzlement charges stem from the use of public money to organize the 2017 referendum. Spain’s 2024 amnesty law covered hundreds of people involved in the independence effort, but the Supreme Court had held that it did not reach those charges, which kept Puigdemont subject to arrest. The Constitutional Court decided Bassa’s appeal by seven votes to five, Spain in English reported.

The judge said the cases share the same facts and the same legal question, so the ruling could affect the basis for the warrants he had kept in place in July 2024. He also said lifting the warrants does not grant Puigdemont amnesty, extinguish his criminal liability or settle the rest of the case. He will decide whether to confirm or change the order once he has the Constitutional Court’s full judgment.

Puigdemont spoke from Waterloo, Belgium, Tuesday evening alongside Comín and Puig. He said the ruling solves “nothing in the conflict between Catalonia and Spain,” according to La Vanguardia’s account of the statement, and he accused Spain’s judiciary of “improper manipulation” in delaying the amnesty. He said he had gone into exile to keep doing politics and to defend the rights of Catalonia’s citizens. His party, Junts, has not set a date for his return.

Josep Rull, the president of Catalonia’s Parliament and a Junts leader who was jailed for organizing the 2017 vote, called the ruling a victory for the whole nation. Rull said normal politics will not return until Catalonia is allowed a self-determination referendum, citing Quebec and Scotland, La Vanguardia reported. “Lifting an arrest warrant is one thing, and the effective application of the amnesty law, which is what we demand, is another,” he said.

The timing puts Catalonia back at the center of Spanish politics. A day earlier, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a snap general election for November 29, CNN reported.

Catalonia held its independence referendum on October 1, 2017, in defiance of a court ban. Nine years later, the man who called it may soon be able to go home.