Spain’s top court clears Puigdemont to return after amnesty ruling

Spain’s Supreme Court has ruled that former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont can come back to the country without being arrested. The decision ends nearly a decade of legal battles that began when he fled to Belgium after leading a failed independence push in 2017. On Monday, the court rejected an appeal from the far-right Vox party against lifting national arrest warrants for Puigdemont and two former regional ministers, Lluís Puig and Toni Comín.

A long legal road

Puigdemont has lived in self-imposed exile in Waterloo, Belgium, since soon after his government organised a banned referendum on Catalan independence. Madrid responded by imposing direct rule, dissolving the regional parliament, sacking its leaders, and calling a snap election. The vote itself was met with a heavy police crackdown, and the region’s separatist majority declared independence before the crackdown. Nine of Puigdemont’s former colleagues were jailed for their roles in the 2017 events, but they were later pardoned by the Spanish government in 2021.

In 2024, Spain’s socialist government introduced a controversial amnesty for dozens of Catalan politicians and activists involved in the secession drive. The Supreme Court initially said Puigdemont and several colleagues should be excluded from the amnesty, citing charges of alleged financial crimes around staging the referendum. But the Constitutional Court overruled that interpretation earlier this month, paving the way for Monday’s decision.

Puigdemont, who was elected to the European Parliament in 2019 and to the Catalan parliament in 2024 as leader of the centre-right Together for Catalonia (JxCat), has remained an active political presence. He travelled across Europe to espouse the Catalan independence cause and fiercely criticise Spain’s democratic institutions. In a video posted on social media as the Supreme Court ruling was announced, he said: “My role was to stir public opinion, internationalise the conflict and work from the heart of Europe to explain the reality of Spain.”

Though he made a surprise appearance in Barcelona in 2024 that prompted a police manhunt, he escaped back over the border to France before he could be detained. Comín, the former regional health minister, plans to travel to Madrid this week for administrative procedures linked to his MEP status. Catalan independence is now a relatively marginal issue in Spain, with housing and immigration dominating the political agenda. Yet Puigdemont’s party JxCat has been instrumental in allowing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to form a new left-wing government after the 2023 election. Within Catalonia, JxCat is struggling as the far-right pro-independence party Catalan Alliance takes many of its voters. Next month, Spain’s general election could see the far right enter government for the first time.