Catalonia's former rebel president can return to Spain, court rules

Key Points:

• Spain's Supreme Court has ruled that former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont can return to Spain without fear of arrest, lifting an arrest warrant linked to the 2017 independence referendum his government organized.
• Puigdemont fled to Belgium after Madrid imposed direct rule on Catalonia following the banned referendum, but the political landscape in Spain has since shifted, with Catalan independence now a marginal issue.
• The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the far-right Vox party against lifting national arrest warrants for Puigdemont and his former ministers, following a Constitutional Court decision overruling their exclusion from a 2024 amnesty.
• Puigdemont, elected as an MEP in 2019 and to the Catalan parliament in 2024, has campaigned internationally and made brief returns to Spain, but his exact plans for returning remain unclear.
• The 2017 referendum was met with a heavy police crackdown, leading to Madrid dissolving the Catalan parliament and sacking its leaders, with several of Puigdemont’s colleagues jailed and later pardoned by the Spanish government.