Llarena lifts the arrest warrant that kept Puigdemont in Waterloo

Spain's Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena lifted the arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont on Tuesday, clearing the way for the former Catalan president to return without detention for the first time in nearly nine years. He has lived in Waterloo, Belgium, since he left Spain after the 2017 independence referendum. He is 63. Spain is heading to a snap general election on 29 November.

The sequence of the two courts is the part that needs care. Reuters reported that the Constitutional Court ruled the amnesty law for Catalan separatists applies to the embezzlement charges against Puigdemont, and that the Supreme Court then lifted the warrant. The Associated Press reported a slightly narrower step: the Constitutional Court said it would apply the government amnesty to one of Puigdemont's political allies who had been found guilty of misusing public funds, and Llarena lifted the warrant while he studies that ruling, which he said would likely affect Puigdemont. Both accounts agree on the practical result. The warrant is lifted. Both agree he spoke to the press from Waterloo the same day.

The charge that kept the warrant alive was the allegation that public funds were misused to hold the 2017 vote, which Spanish courts treated as illegal. The amnesty was the government's attempt to close that file for a class of separatist offences. Judges had resisted applying it to embezzlement. Tuesday is the day that resistance gave way at the Constitutional Court, and the day the investigating judge at the Supreme Court took the warrant off the book rather than wait for a further fight.

Return is not the same as acquittal. Llarena's order, on the AP account, is a pause while he reads the Constitutional Court decision. On the Reuters account, the higher court has already said the amnesty covers the embezzlement case against him. Either way, police in Spain no longer have a live warrant to execute at the border. That is the change from Monday. A man who has spent the years since 2017 in Belgium can cross without being detained on arrival, at least on this warrant.

The election calendar makes the legal step political at once. Pedro Sanchez called the 29 November vote. Puigdemont remains unpopular across most of Spain, the AP noted, and opposition parties are likely to use a return against the prime minister. Junts per Catalunya, his party, has been a hinge in recent Spanish parliaments. A candidate who can campaign in Catalonia in person is a different factor from a candidate who sends messages from Waterloo. It is too early to know whether he will stand, appear at rallies, or stay away until after the count. The court has removed the barrier that made those choices impossible.

Waterloo has been the address of the exile: the town, the party office, the press conferences. Tuesday's statement came from there, not from Barcelona. The flight or the train he takes, if he takes one, will be the next dated fact. Until then the record is judicial. A Constitutional Court ruling on the amnesty. A Supreme Court judge lifting a warrant. An election 54 days away. A 63-year-old who left after a referendum in 2017 and who can now come back without that particular arrest waiting at the airport.

The open point is how far Llarena's study of the ruling narrows the relief. If he accepts that the amnesty covers the embezzlement file, the case that justified the warrant is over. If he reads the ruling as applying only to the ally, he could try to rebuild a basis for a new order. For this week the warrant that kept Puigdemont out is gone, and the campaign for 29 November has a possible new body in it.