Junts per Catalunya accused in writing the Government of Pedro Sánchez of using the Constitutional Court to shield its support for the Executive by deceiving its leadership with promises of rulings from the Court of Guarantees that never arrived or did so more than a year late. Likewise, it attributes to it a “passive or even obstructive role” so that the Prosecutor’s Office of the body chaired by Cándido Conde-Pumpido sabotages the immediate return of Carles Puigdemont.
The independence party sent a secret report to the PSOE after the breakdown of the investiture pact last October. In this document, it cited as one of the reasons for withdrawing its support having been deceived by the Executive in the approval and application of the Amnesty Law with a constant “dance of dates” with which, according to the secessionists, it tried to maintain parliamentary support by delaying rulings to consume as much of the legislature as possible without the separatists having the capacity to break.
According to EL MUNDO, this document, which was delivered by the independence party to the socialists through the mediators of the Switzerland meetings, coordinated through the Henri Dunant Foundation, dedicates one of its four sections to the Amnesty Law. It describes how initially the Government, referred to in the report as “the Spanish side,” committed to Junts that the body chaired by Cándido Conde-Pumpido would immediately endorse, already in June 2024, barely a month after its approval in Congress, the law that erased the crimes of 1-O and kept Sánchez in power with a margin of two votes.
Junts adds that in meetings held with the PSOE, whose interlocutors were mainly former Organization Secretary Santos Cerdán and former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, several dates were set by the socialists for the long-awaited Constitutional ruling that were systematically missed. Thus, the document reflects that upon realizing the endorsement was not issued in June, the socialist interlocutors committed that it would arrive in September of the same year. As months passed without fulfilling this commitment, the PSOE assured that the ruling would not go beyond December.
The unmet commitments extended, Junts emphasizes in its report, throughout 2025, with the PSOE negotiating team in Switzerland insisting that the final Constitutional ruling would not pass March of that year. Therefore, requesting Catalan politicians to be patient while reiterating at all times that the ruling would be positive and would automatically allow the return to Spain of the fugitive Puigdemont.
The report was sent after concluding the investiture pact
The ruling was finally made public in June of that year, with relations between both formations already very deteriorated, so Puigdemont’s team labels in the report a series of issues as serious “breaches,” prominently including the Constitutional endorsement. Regarding this body, the socialists were seen by the secessionists as a Court of Guarantees over which they exercised absolute control. Finally, the court approved by six votes to four at the end of June the core aspects of the law, considering that it facilitated political normalization in Catalonia.
With what the independence leadership calls “the gas valve” against its members, the Executive continued playing in the following months after the Supreme Court agreed that the law was not applicable to Puigdemont and maintained the arrest warrant against him, which remains in force.
Thus, another of the serious “breaches” that Puigdemont points out in the report and that motivated his definitive break with the Government is the position of the Prosecutor’s Office, which opposed the precautionary measures requested by the former Catalan president. He demanded the immediate suspension of the search, arrest, and imprisonment order decreed by the procés instructor, Judge Pablo Llarena.
Details the ‘breaches’ that motivated his break
Puigdemont’s defense then argued that it was a measure of deprivation of liberty “issued without prior conviction” and that it was causing “immediate, current, and above all, irreparable effects” by affecting the “most essential core of fundamental rights.” The Chief Prosecutor of the Constitutional Court, Pablo Crespo, rejected this argument, maintaining that if he were allowed to return, his decision would entail a “serious disturbance of a constitutionally protected interest,” referring to the “general interest,” and refused to assess the “political reasons” put forward by the Junts leader fugitive in Waterloo.
In this vein, Junts’ document reproaches Sánchez’s Government, which it also attributes direct control over the Public Ministry, for the “passive or even obstructive role” of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of Guarantees. It considers that the opposition to the precautionary measures pursues no other objective than to prevent the immediate return of a Puigdemont whom Sánchez promised in November 2019 to “bring back to Spain and make him answer before the Spanish Justice” because “no one is above Justice.” All this to avoid a new major political crisis.
According to this newspaper, Junts considered including in its report among the list of reproaches the actions of the National Court and the Court of Auditors against the independence supporters but ultimately dismissed it, considering that they are not under direct control of the Executive as is the case with the Public Ministry and the Constitutional Court.
Reproached the “passive or even obstructive role” of the Prosecutor’s Office
Alongside the Amnesty Law section, Junts introduced as major breaches by Sánchez the materialization of the transfer of immigration powers to Catalonia, since in the negotiation tables the PSOE committed that Podemos would not sabotage it, as finally happened, or the publication of fiscal balances. That is, the explicit recognition by the Executive that the Spanish State owes at least 20 billion to Catalonia. As a fourth “breach,” Junts included the official status of Catalan in Europe.
The messages sent by Junts to the PSOE were automatically reported by Zapatero to the Prime Minister. In the messages intercepted by the Judicial Police from the former president, there are instructions to his personal secretary to hand over “envelopes” by hand to Sánchez containing this sensitive information.
This happened, for example, last January, when Zapatero, who already had access to the referred report, informed Sánchez of the relationship with Junts at a time when the only possibility to redirect the situation was a new ruling from the Constitutional Court, this time to consider that the Amnesty Law also applies to Puigdemont’s embezzlement crime and thus authorize his return, overruling the Supreme Court.
This ruling is scheduled for next autumn, although, again, the socialists assured Junts that it would have been issued months ago. A year ago, Zapatero also instructed his secretary to destroy a confidential note containing Junts’ demands not to break with the PSOE hours after meeting with Puigdemont in Zurich.
In just a few days, next Thursday, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) will issue its ruling on the Amnesty Law to determine whether the expenses of the procés put the EU’s financial interests at risk and whether the forgetting of terrorism crimes was in accordance with community regulations. In the ranks of Carles Puigdemont’s party, they take for granted that the ruling will be favorable to their interests and consider as a possible option that Puigdemont returns to Spain again after the summer if the Constitutional Court further delays its final ruling. After all, Junts bets its recovery, facing the unstoppable rise of Catalan Alliance, on the return of its leader, which will cause, according to its main collaborators, a rapid comeback in voting intention for the next general elections.
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