Spain’s constitutional ruling and the temporary lifting of the arrest warrant have cleared Puigdemont’s immediate path home. Junts now faces the risk that his return could expose the limits of his electoral weight.
The Tribunal Constitucional has ordered a new look at the embezzlement case while the Tribunal Supremo has temporarily lifted Carles Puigdemont’s arrest warrant. Spain is heading toward early elections on 29 November.
That opens a route back to Catalonia, but the legal process is unfinished. The Supreme Court must receive the full judgment and issue a reasoned decision before Puigdemont’s criminal liability can be definitively extinguished.
The immediate question is no longer whether the legal door has opened. It is whether he should walk through it before voters go to the polls.
The Constitutional Court reached its decision by seven votes to five in a case concerning former Catalan minister Dolors Bassa. Its instruction to apply the amnesty in that case created the legal basis for the Supreme Court to reconsider the embezzlement proceedings involving Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Lluís Puig.
Gonzalo Boye has refused to set a date. Speaking on TV3, Puigdemont’s lawyer and personal adviser said only that the former president would spend Christmas at his home in Girona. A day earlier, Boye had sounded more urgent and suggested that Puigdemont might even vote on 29 November because he had been deprived of that right for a long time.
That shift captures the dilemma inside Junts. A rapid return would give the party its strongest visual asset during the campaign. A delayed return would reduce the risk of an arrival that generates attention without changing the result.
The stakes are unusually high because Junts has built nine electoral contests around the absence of its leader since he left Spain in 2017 to avoid arrest. The party repeatedly argued that campaigning without Puigdemont meant competing with one hand tied behind its back. During the Catalan elections two years ago, Junts moved its campaign to southern France and organised dozens of coaches so supporters could attend rallies without police interruptions.
The legal process remains provisional. Judge Pablo Llarena lifted the national arrest warrants against Puigdemont, Comín and Puig, but the measure remains in force only until a further judicial decision; the Supreme Court may still confirm or modify it after receiving the Constitutional Court’s full ruling. The decision concerns Spain’s national warrants and should not automatically be read as the final closure of every legal or international issue.
The strategy did not deliver the expected result. The PSC finished seven seats and almost 200,000 votes ahead of Junts, and Salvador Illa became president. In the July 2023 general election, Junts also received fewer votes than the PSC, Sumar-Comuns, the PP and ERC.
Current voting surveys show Junts in a deep slump. Party spokespeople have spent months presenting Puigdemont’s return as the possible remedy. That argument now carries a direct electoral risk: a poor result with its leader back in Catalonia would force Junts to explain why the supposed decisive advantage failed to materialise.
Puigdemont has tried to separate the decision from the election. From Waterloo, he said his return would be for the country rather than for his party. Jordi Turull has also stepped back from earlier pressure, saying Junts would respect whatever plan Puigdemont chooses after the constitutional ruling.
Boye’s position is more cautious. He has argued that returning without written confirmation that the Tribunal Supremo has fully closed Puigdemont’s case would not be sensible. Félix Bolaños says Puigdemont is free to return at any time. He says the same about Toni Comín and Lluís Puig, making the delay a personal decision.
Comín has acknowledged an urgency to come back to Spain because doing so would allow him to complete the legal process required to take his seat as a member of the European Parliament. Junts insists that Puigdemont’s position is different. Turull says he endured nine years in a “glass prison” rather than seek a personal solution.
The issue is also tied to Puigdemont’s record of promises. In 2019, he said he would return if elected as a member of the European Parliament, but remained in Belgium after winning the seat. In 2024, he said he would leave politics if he failed to be invested as president, yet neither that withdrawal nor a full return followed. He appeared briefly at a rally in central Barcelona after the election and then went back to Belgium.
His inner circle says he has always wanted an institutional return in which the person coming back is the president of the Generalitat rather than simply Carles Puigdemont. The calculation is therefore about timing and political form as much as geography. A previous report examined the same uncertainty before the latest judicial turn.
There is no evidence in the material that Pedro Sánchez has asked Puigdemont to stay away. That claim came from Xavier García Albiol, who argued on Antena 3 that the prime minister might want to prevent a stronger Junts from damaging ERC. It remains his theory, not an established explanation for Puigdemont’s decision.
Junts says the general election is not its priority and does not expect Míriam Nogueras to challenge the leadership publicly for Puigdemont’s presence. The party describes her as a loyal lieutenant. That leaves the decisive move with the former president himself.
Returning before the vote would remove the exile argument that Junts has used across nine campaigns, but it would also attach Puigdemont personally to the next result. Staying in Waterloo preserves room for another explanation if the party underperforms.
The Constitutional Court has challenged the Supreme Court’s earlier interpretation that the leaders’ actions involved personal enrichment. That reasoning had been used to deny amnesty for embezzlement. The ruling opens the legal route and removes the immediate arrest barrier, but it does not guarantee final judicial clearance or an electoral breakthrough.
Puigdemont’s timing will determine whether Junts treats the return as a constitutional act or as its last campaign weapon. The Supreme Court must still receive the Constitutional Court’s full ruling and issue its reasoned decision.
