On 12 May 2024, elections were held in Catalonia for the Parliament of Catalonia in accordance with Spanish law. Almost one million voters from the pro-independence camp did not go to the polls. It seems that most of them have broken with the parliamentary system under Spanish law and are now looking for other ways to realise Catalonia's independence from Spain and the establishment of the Republic of Catalonia (República Catalana).
5,433,166 people were eligible to vote on 12 May 2024, 57.9% of whom took part in the elections. 135 members of the Catalan parliament were elected. One of them is President Carles Puigdemont, who was unlawfully removed from office by Spain on 27 October 2017 and has been living in exile as a politically persecuted person ever since, although he has always been available to European justice as a European citizen and has never ‘fled’ from justice, as the Spanish media close to the government have been defamatory in claiming for years. On the contrary, the judiciary of other European countries was not prepared to participate in his politically motivated persecution by the Spanish judicial apparatus, as the rule of law functions in countries such as Belgium or Germany, unlike in Spain.
According to Article 71 (2) of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Spain of 29 December 1978, amended by the law of 27 August 1992 (Article 13 (2)), which refers to the deputies of the Cortes Generales but applies by analogy to all deputies of the parliaments of the Autonomous Communities within the Spanish central state, deputies may only be arrested during their term of office if they have committed a criminal offence. They may only be charged or prosecuted with the prior authorisation of the chamber concerned.
The Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia is constitutional law (organic law) of the Kingdom of Spain and is recognised as part of the Spanish legal system by Article 147 of the Spanish Constitution of 1978.
Article 57 (1) of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006 stipulates that members of the Catalan Parliament enjoy parliamentary immunity when voting and expressing their opinions in the exercise of their office and may not be arrested during their term of office, unless they commit tangible criminal offences.
As an elected member of the Catalan parliament, President Carles Puigdemont enjoys parliamentary immunity under Spanish law throughout the territory of the Kingdom of Spain. He is neither a convicted criminal nor is it apparent that he has committed any criminal offence. Insofar as he has been accused by Spanish judges in the past of having violated the Spanish Constitution (not Spanish criminal law, mind you!) by playing a decisive role in organising the holding of a referendum decided by the Catalan Parliament, which is not punishable under Spanish law, on the question of whether or not Catalonia should become independent from Spain in the form of a democratic republic, Constitutional Law 1/2024 of 10 June 2024 applies. This law on the amnesty for institutional, political and social normalisation in Catalonia was promulgated in the Spanish Official Gazette BOE on 11 June 2024 (‘Ley Orgánica 1/2024, de 10 de junio, de amnistía para la normalización institucional, política y social en Cataluña’, in: BOE 141, 11 June 2024, https://www.boe.es/eli/es/lo/2024/06/10/1/con
This means that no Spanish judge is currently authorised to issue or execute an arrest warrant against President Carles Puigdemont.
Nevertheless, the Spanish critocrat Pablo Llarena, a judge at the Spanish Supreme Court, has upheld a national arrest warrant against President Puigdemont, claiming in his own right that he is not bound by the amnesty law that was passed by the legislature and has come into force. This alone is an outrageous act that puts Spain on the sidelines and separates it from the other civilised, constitutional countries of the European Union.
President Puigdemont had publicly announced that he would take part in the parliamentary debate on 8 August 2024, participate in the parliamentary discussion and cast his vote as a deputy. He was aware that the Spanish state would probably have him illegally arrested and taken to Madrid when he left parliament after this session. He even had to expect to die an ‘accidental’ death in Spanish custody, for example as a result of an ‘unexpected’ heart failure. Nevertheless, he wanted to exercise his parliamentary rights, as he was legally entitled to do. He has neither been convicted nor charged before a Spanish court. He is fully entitled to his parliamentary immunity. In the Kingdom of Spain, which is not a constitutional state when it comes to Catalonia or the Basque Country and massively violates human rights at will, this is of course irrelevant.
President Puigdemont arrived in Barcelona on 6 August 2024 and, as previously announced, gave a speech to a large crowd in front of the parliament on 8 August 2024. He had walked to the podium. When he was told that the police had hermetically sealed off the parliament building and were planning to have him illegally arrested and taken to Madrid so that he could not attend the session of the Catalan parliament and exercise his rights as a deputy, he had himself driven to northern Catalonia in the back of a car, from where he travelled on to Belgium. (Just as a sleazy, fraudulent press has been spreading the fictitious, demonstrably false story that he fled Catalonia in the boot of a car since the end of October 2017, there has also been a colourful mixture of invented stories about the president's return journey to Belgium).
A large-scale search operation and police roadblocks were unsuccessful. The world witnessed how the Spanish state prevented an elected representative from attending a parliamentary session and exercising his parliamentary rights. The peaceful crowd in front of which President Puigdemont had spoken was attacked by the police with pepper spray for no reason and disproportionately.
On 8 August 2024, the social democrat Salvador Illa was elected as the 133rd President of Catalonia with 68 votes in favour and 66 against due to his support from the former independence party Esquerra Republicana (ERC). President Puigdemont had announced that he would vote against this election. As it cannot be ruled out that the eloquent Catalan politician could have persuaded other MPs in the debate to refuse to vote for the PSOE candidate and either abstain or vote against his election, in such a case the election would probably be declared null and void ex tunc in any other member state of the European Union. However, when it comes to Catalonia and the Basque Country, Spain is not a constitutional state, but is constantly breaking its own constitutional law in order not to lose one of its last colonies on European soil.
The fact that the other countries of the European Union stand idly by and watch this unlawful behaviour of Spain discredits the European Union worldwide and in front of its own citizens.
The European Union will have no long-term future and will lose the support of the people in the member states if it continues to tolerate such obvious injustice within its ranks and looks the other way. It should have intervened long ago and suspended Spain's membership rights in the Union until Spain becomes a democratic constitutional state.
Spain continues to break national and international law and commit serious human rights violations. And Europe remains silent and agrees!