Spain’s Supreme Court dropped the sedition charges against Carles Puigdemont, the former president of the Catalan Generalidad who organized the illegal referendum for Catalonia’s independence in 2017. The decision came after the entry into force of a new law recently approved by the Spanish parliament and desired by the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez, which greatly restricts the scope of the crime, to such an extent that, wrote the investigating judge Pablo Llarena, “we are close to complete decriminalization”.
Puigdemont remains accused of two other crimes: embezzlement, i.e. illicit management of public funds, and rebellion. But the fall of the crime of sedition, which was by far the most serious, considerably reduces the sentence that Puigdemont would have to serve: it goes from a possible sentence of 15 years in prison to about 4. However, Puigdemont will hardly be tried: a few days after the referendum he fled to Belgium, where he is still and where he was elected MEP. The accusation of sedition was also dropped for the other independence leaders who had fled from Catalonia together with Puigdemont.
