Puigdemont looks to October 6: the decision that could unlock his return to Catalonia

As of today, the Organic Law 1/2024, of June 10, on amnesty for institutional, political, and social normalization in Catalonia has already completed its ordinary parliamentary process and has been sanctioned and published in the BOE (Official State Gazette) on June 11, 2024. That is, there are no pending parliamentary procedures for its validity as a law. What remains concerns its judicial application and constitutional review.

1. Parliamentary status of the amnesty law

The law was processed as Organic Law Proposal 122/000019, “on amnesty for institutional, political, and social normalization in Catalonia,” presented by the Socialist Group. The Congress:

• Admitted it for processing and took it into consideration in December 2023.
• Rejected the total amendments in the Plenary on January 10, 2024.
• Approved the Commission report and the text in Plenary (favorable votes 177 and, after a new round, 178 against 172).
• Sent the text to the Senate in March 2024.

In the Senate, amendments were presented and a veto to the proposal was approved. On May 16, 2024, the veto was returned to the Congress, which in the session of May 30:

• Debated the Senate veto.
• Lifted it and ratified the text sent to the Senate, which is thus definitively approved by the Cortes Generales.

The Congress Bulletin of June 6, 2024, records this “definitive approval” and publishes the approved text. Subsequently, the law is promulgated by the King and published in the BOE of June 11, 2024. From that moment, the parliamentary legislative procedure is concluded.

2. Entry into force and “definitive” application

After publication in the BOE, the law enters into force on the date it itself establishes in its final provision. From that moment:

• Judges and courts must apply the amnesty to criminal, accounting, or administrative proceedings that fall within the scope of the law (acts linked to the Catalan independence process on the dates and cases defined by the regulation).
• The law establishes deadlines and rules for judicial and administrative bodies to review ex officio or at the request of a party the affected proceedings and convictions, archive cases, nullify arrest warrants, and cease the execution of penalties or sanctions when appropriate.
• In many cases, an individualized action is necessary (archiving orders, sentence reviews, lifting precautionary measures, etc.), so the “definitive application” is not a single act but a set of case-by-case decisions.

3. Constitutional review: appeals before the Constitutional Court

Once approved and published, an organic law may be subject to unconstitutionality appeals. According to institutional data, several appeals have been filed before the Constitutional Court against Organic Law 1/2024, promoted by autonomous communities and regional parliaments, which also appear as initiatives in the Cortes (series 232/… in Congress).

For your question, this implies:

• The unconstitutionality appeal does not automatically suspend the validity of the law: the amnesty remains applicable while the Constitutional Court does not issue a ruling annulling it totally or partially, or agree on very specific precautionary measures.
• The Constitutional Court must:
  • Decide on the admission of each appeal.
  • Process allegations from the parties involved.
  • Deliberate and issue a ruling, maintaining, annulling, or reinterpreting provisions.
• Until those rulings are issued, the applicable framework is the law as it was approved and published.

4. What really “remains” for its full effectiveness?

Strictly speaking of “parliamentary procedures,” none remain: Congress has approved the final text, lifted the Senate veto, and the law is promulgated and published in the BOE.

What remains pending for the amnesty to translate into a fully stabilized situation is:

• The resolution of all affected proceedings by the competent judicial and administrative bodies.
• The doctrine established by the Constitutional Court when resolving the unconstitutionality appeals filed, which may confirm the law, annul some provisions, or modulate its scope.

In summary, the parliamentary process of the amnesty law is closed; the current phase is the judicial application and constitutional review, which will practically determine the definitive scope of the amnesty in each specific case.

The Constitutional Court (TC) has a central competence in matters of amparo appeals: to guarantee the ultimate protection of fundamental rights and public freedoms recognized in articles 14 to 29 of the Constitution and the right to conscientious objection in article 30.2. This protection is articulated through a specific process, regulated in the Organic Law of the Constitutional Court (LOTC), which grants the TC its own and limited powers, distinct from those of ordinary courts.

1. What the Constitutional Court can hear in amparo

The TC is competent to hear amparo appeals against acts, provisions, or omissions of public authorities that violate fundamental rights. The LOTC broadly distinguishes three main blocks:

• Acts of legislative bodies and the General Council of the Judiciary (parliamentary amparo): decisions or acts without the force of law, such as agreements of the Chambers' Boards, parliamentary committees, or the CGPJ that directly affect fundamental rights (for example, arbitrary denial of the right to speak, parliamentary initiatives, or disciplinary sanctions).
• Acts of the Administration and Government (administrative amparo): provisions, acts, or omissions of the Government, public administrations, and executive bodies of autonomous communities that infringe fundamental rights, provided that administrative remedies and, where appropriate, judicial remedies have been previously exhausted.
• Acts of judicial bodies (judicial amparo): rulings and actions of judges and courts that violate fundamental rights, whether by application of a norm, interpretation of a right, omission of procedural guarantees, etc. In this area, the TC acts as a guarantor of effective judicial protection and other fundamental rights in the process, but not as a “fourth instance” reviewing ordinary legality.

In all cases, the Court only intervenes when the violation affects rights protected by the constitutional amparo catalogue. It is not competent to correct mere legality errors (e.g., interpretation of ordinary norms), except when those errors result in a violation of fundamental rights.

2. Formal requirements and admissibility filter

The TC's competence in amparo is conditioned by strict admission requirements, which are also part of its function:

• Exhaustion of prior remedies: generally, the claimant must have used all available administrative and judicial remedies before approaching the TC.
• Strict deadline: the appeal must be filed within a very short period from the last resolution or from the violation of the right (deadlines set concretely by the LOTC depending on the type of challenged act).
• Special constitutional relevance: since the 2007 reform, the TC only admits appeals that, besides alleging a rights violation, present relevance beyond the specific case (for example, because they clarify or change doctrine, unify criteria, or because the violation results from a repetition of harmful practices).

This admissibility filter is an essential competence: the Court is not obliged to resolve all appeals on the merits, but only those that meet these requirements and reach the threshold of “special constitutional relevance.”

3. Powers of the TC when resolving an amparo appeal

When admitting and upholding an amparo appeal, the Constitutional Court has, among others, the following material powers:

• Declare the violation of the alleged fundamental right, identifying the act, resolution, or provision that caused it.
• Annul totally or partially the challenged act or resolution, or the part of the applied norm that caused the violation in the specific case, when required to repair the right.
• Restore the appellant to the full exercise of their right, ordering necessary measures: retroactive procedural actions, retrial, readmission in a procedure, refund of sanctions or fines, access to a benefit or candidacy, etc.
• Establish constitutional doctrine on the scope of the affected fundamental right, which binds all public authorities and serves as a criterion for future cases. This doctrinal function is a key part of its competence in amparo.
• Order suspension, in certain cases, of the execution of the challenged act or resolution while the appeal is processed, when execution could cause harm that would defeat the purpose of the amparo and always balancing the general interest and third-party rights.

In sum, through the amparo appeal, the Constitutional Court acts as the supreme guarantor of fundamental rights against any public authority, but with limited scope: it only hears violations of rights in the constitutional catalogue, requires prior exhaustion of ordinary remedies, and selects cases by their special constitutional importance. Its competence is not to replace ordinary judges in interpreting the law but to ensure that such interpretation—and the actions of all public authorities—always respect the Constitution and the fundamental rights recognized therein.

Carles Puigdemont i Casamajó (Amer, Girona, December 29, 1962) is a trained journalist and Catalan politician. Before being sworn in as the 130th president of the Generalitat of Catalonia in 2016, he developed a long career both in journalism and in Catalan nationalist politics, first at the local level and later in the Parliament of Catalonia.

Born into a family with a pastry-making tradition in Amer, his official biography notes that from a young age he was linked to the Catalan cultural and political environment. This combination of local roots and concern for Catalonia's projection would mark both his professional career and his later political activity.

Professionally, Puigdemont began in local journalism. The stakeholder database describes him as someone who “started his career in local journalism and directed media such as the Catalan News Agency and Catalonia Today.” This stage placed him in the Catalan written press, especially in the media ecosystem reporting on the politics and society of Girona and Catalonia. His experience at the Catalan News Agency (ACN), a reference agency in the Catalan language, allowed him to gain visibility as a journalist specialized in political and institutional information.

A key piece of his professional trajectory before the presidency is his direction of Catalonia Today, an English-language publication aimed at projecting Catalonia's reality abroad. From there, Puigdemont combined his journalistic profile with an explicit vocation to internationalize the Catalan political debate. This emphasis on explaining Catalonia to the world would be a constant in his later political career and public discourse.

Alongside his media work, the consulted biography indicates that Puigdemont has been linked to Convergència i Unió (CiU) since 1983. This early militancy in the convergent space—then hegemonic in Catalan nationalism—places his political commitment long before his entry into major institutions. During these decades, his profile consolidated as that of an activist and political cadre combining communication work and militancy in the party heir to Jordi Pujol.

The leap to the first institutional line occurred in the 2000s. According to the biography recorded in the parliamentary database, in 2006 he was elected deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia. This election made him an autonomous parliamentarian at a time of great centrality of the debate on the Statute and Catalonia's status within Spain. In the Parliament, his communicative experience and his pro-independence profile within the convergent space allowed him to gain internal political weight.

After this stage as a deputy, the biography notes another relevant milestone: in 2011 he was elected mayor of Girona. The mayorship of the Girona capital meant his consolidation as a territorial leader of reference within the post-convergent space. From the City Council, Puigdemont governed a key city in the Catalan political map, with a strong associative network and significant symbolic weight for the sovereignty movement. His municipal mandate reinforced his image as a manager and, at the same time, as a leader clearly aligned with pro-independence positions.

In these years before 2016, his figure rested on three pillars: a long experience in communication and media (local and Catalan national scope), a sustained militancy in Convergència i Unió since the early 1980s, and an institutional trajectory ranging from the seat in the Parliament (2006) to the mayorship of Girona (2011). This combination of journalistic trajectory, long-standing militancy, and elected positions at the autonomous and municipal levels explains why, when the internal crisis in the convergent space opened and Artur Mas renounced re-election, Puigdemont appeared as an available and politically coherent profile to assume the presidency of the Generalitat.

In summary, before arriving at the Palau de la Generalitat in 2016, Carles Puigdemont had already accumulated:

• A journalistic career that includes directing the Catalan News Agency and the English-language newspaper Catalonia Today.
• More than three decades of militancy and political activity in the Convergència i Unió space since 1983.
• Experience as a deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia since 2006.
• The mayorship of Girona, which he held from 2011, consolidating him as a municipal leader and a reference figure of Catalan nationalism in the territory.

On this professional and political foundation, his later projection as president of the Generalitat and, later, as one of the central leaders of Catalan independenceism was built.