The order

Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena issued an order on Monday, 19 October, confirming the lifting of the national arrest warrants against former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and former regional ministers Antoni Comín and Lluís Puig. The order rejects an appeal for reconsideration that the popular prosecution filed against his 6 October decision, which had provisionally set the warrants aside. Llarena applies the amnesty doctrine that the Constitutional Court set out when it granted an amparo to former regional minister Dolors Bassa, under which the embezzlement charge falls within the amnesty. The lifting also covers detention requests and any prison admission orders that stem solely from those warrants.

Criticism of the Constitutional Court

Llarena accepts that the Constitutional Court's ruling binds him, yet he faults the sharpness of its language. According to the order, five Constitutional Court magistrates defended the validity of the Supreme Court's reading, while seven rejected it. Llarena argues that a split of that kind called for more measured wording than the court used, and he wrote:

“Adjectives do not make indisputable what has fractured the Court.”

Llarena maintains that the Supreme Court's interpretation was legally grounded and cannot be called inadmissible or unforeseeable, even though the constitutional doctrine now obliges him to drop it. In the same order he adds a further point.

“Recognising who has the last word does not require sharing that the problem admitted only one answer.”

The judge stresses that his disagreement cannot condition or delay compliance with the Constitutional Court's ruling, a court presided over by Cándido Conde-Pumpido.

Why the warrants fell

Until now, Llarena had held that the embezzlement attributed to Puigdemont and the other defendants fell outside the amnesty because it gave them a personal financial benefit. The Supreme Court did not locate that benefit in the direct receipt of money. Instead it located the benefit in the defendants avoiding personal payment of costs that were charged to public funds. The Constitutional Court rejected that reading and held that this supposed benefit could not be equated with the cost of the illegal referendum. The new doctrine therefore forces Llarena to abandon that position for all three men.

Appeal and what comes next

The appeal against the 6 October order came from the popular prosecution, which LaSexta identifies as Vox. LaSexta reports that the judge considers the lifting must be immediate, because keeping the warrants in place has no effect under the constitutional doctrine. The order directs urgent notices to the State security forces so that the warrants are cancelled in registries and computer systems, and it asks for confirmation that the communications were received. The judge stresses that the ruling only lifts the orders: the procedure has not concluded, and the final decision on extinction of liability and dismissal rests with the competent trial chamber under the ordinary procedure. eldiario.es reports that Puigdemont can return to Spain without risk of arrest.