MADRID.- The Ley organic Amnesty for institutional, political and social normalization in Catalonia, known as the Amnesty Law, came into force in Spain on June 11, when the two-month period for its application began, but it is already accumulating objections to benefit independentists, including Carles Puigdemont, while requests from beneficiaries increase.
The controversial legal text, approved by Congress that lifted the Senate’s veto, was signed by King Felipe VI and the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, and published in the BOE, and orders “all Spaniards, individuals and authorities” , that they “keep and ensure” this organic law, according to Spanish media.
However, judicial objections to applying it to the alleged cases are once again coming to light. beneficiaries.
The Amnesty Law is the result of an agreement between the PSOE and the independence parties Junts and ERC to make the investiture of Sánchez possible, in exchange for amnesty to all those involved in the Catalan process, as of November 1, 2011, with the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, until November 13, 2023. That is, it covers those convicted by the consultation of November 9, 2014 as well as those in the 2017 independence referendum.
The head of Junts, the Catalan Carles Puigdemont, who has been evading Spanish justice in Belgium for seven years, is one of them.
Since the legal proposal, leaders of the PP and even the PSOE as well as vast sectors of Spain, including the judiciary, opposed the text as they considered it “unconstitutional” and caused massive protests.
Amnesty in we will see
After coming into force while the grace period runs out, the investigating judge of the ‘procés’ in the Supreme Court, Pablo Llarena, agreed to maintain the national arrest warrant for Puigdemont, who is being prosecuted for embezzlement among other crimes.
“The order remains in force and active,” reported Judge Llarena, after giving the Prosecutor’s Office a period of five days to report on how the Law affects the case.
But also, prosecutors of the process They delivered this Wednesday to the attorney general a report in which they base their refusal to grant amnesty for the embezzlement attributed to the former Catalan president, among others. And they affirm that if his superior does not share the argument, he must debate the case in a Board of Prosecutors, but they will not sign the decree.
It is “undoubted” that Puigdemont, the former councilors prosecuted in absentia Toni Comín and Lluís Puig, the former vice president of the Government, Oriol Junqueras, among others, “subtracted public funds in the form of millions of euros to execute against the decisions of the Constitutional Court and the Court Superior of Justice of Catalonia an unconstitutional project for the disintegration of Spain,” they noted in the text cited by EuropaPress.
In 2023, the Supreme Court confirmed the prosecution of Puigdemont for the crimes of aggravated embezzlement and disobedience, by modifying the crime of sedition, during his presidency.
Enrichment through embezzlement would have affected the financial interests of the European Union (EU), maintain prosecutors, who recall that embezzlement is not contemplated in the new law. “It is inappropriate,” they said.
Puigdemont, who spent more than five years evading justice in Spain, aspires to return to the presidency of the Generalitat, after the recent elections in Catalonia where the socialist Salvador Illa won.
Court requests increase
Faced with this, the list of candidates for amnesty is increasing.
Requests from the ERC independentists led by Junqueras, the Òmnium Cultural on behalf of the accused in Tsunami Democràtic Oleguer Serra, arrived prematurely at the courts. y Solidarity Alert, which represents around twenty defendants, including those accused of forming a CDR terrorist cell, according to news reports.
Nine police officers of the 46 prosecuted for injuries in an event known as 1-O in Barcelona also requested amnesty and are awaiting a dismissal because “there was no torture or degrading treatment.”
The Amnesty Law allows the defendants to return to Spain without an arrest warrant, to be able to run again for public office or to be leaders of their parties and to participate in elections.
Puigdemont has not yet requested it. His lawyer Gonzalo Boye declared on TV3 that “he will wait for the courts to address him to request the application of the law.”
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Source: With information from agencies, publico.es, newspaper.com, lasexta.com
