When the TGUE ruling was made public yesterday morning that completely rejected the appeals of pro-independence MEPs against the resolution of the European Parliament, Puigdemont hastened to announce that “nothing ends, on the contrary, everything continues”. It is surprising, but Puigdemont, when he said this, was absolutely right.
Without prejudice to the outcome of the appeal that has already been announced before the CJEU, the bizarre judicial mess in which the Spanish courts, the European ones, the community institutions, and, in return, all have been immersed for too many years us, it has not yet come to the beginning of the end. In reality, the end of the beginning is not even in sight. I suppose that those who decided in 2017 that the judicial way was the right way to resolve the constitutional challenge raised by the Catalan autonomous authorities will have already realized that, with the prerogative of haste, they have been left with the misery of not having where to go
It is true that today’s ruling concludes that the procedure followed for the withdrawal of immunity was correct. So true that not even the president of the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, Adrián Vázquez, has been able to elucidate the practical consequences. On the one hand, Vázquez believes that Puigdemont cannot be suspended as a deputy; on the other hand, it is not clear – I assure you that the same thing happens to me – what the effects of the sentence may be with regard to extradition requests. All to conclude that it is necessary to study it, which is a very common reasoning when the person issuing it has no idea what can happen.
The doubts don’t end there. Following Vázquez’s reasoning, and beyond alluding to the intrinsic perversity of the Belgian authorities, I also wonder if judge Llarena’s extradition orders can be reactivated or should be issued again given the penal reforms that repealed the crime of sedition and modified that of embezzlement. Possibly, any reasonable person would believe that, in order to avoid predictable shocks, it would be best to proceed to a new formulation, but you will have already noticed that we lawyers do not usually use logic like the rest of the bipeds.
It is not even clear, seeing the judgment of the CJEU in the case of Lluís Puig from January, that Belgium must attend without objection to the extradition requests, old or new, of Llarena. The Belgian judge could claim a new Euroorder perfectly, practice testing to determine if the pro-independence groups are a target group persecuted in Spain due to ideology, refuse delivery and open a new incident before the CJEU. And so until Puigdemont, Llarena, you and myself reach retirement age or even more deplorable states.
In short, today the only thing we know for sure is that the pro-independence mantra with European justice has more holes than a colander and that Puigdemont cannot come to Spain without being arrested. Everything else is left to Nostradamus or some unknown genius to find a political solution. Those of us in the toga don’t give for more.
