OVIEDO, Spain

The Spanish Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not offer amnesty to former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and other separatist leaders, in a major blow to the Spanish government's controversial amnesty bill.

In the decision, the court's leading judge argued that the Catalan politicians responsible for the 2017 independence push embezzled funds in a way that benefited them personally and damaged the finances of the European Union.

Therefore, the court argued that the Venice Declaration makes it possible to reject a key part of the amnesty bill, which was formulated to see top Catalan leadership fully pardoned.

The international arrest warrant for Puigdemont, who fled Spain in 2017, stands.

As Spanish daily El Pais reported, the ruling is a huge setback for the Spanish government and its allies.

Indeed, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was only able to form his progressive government by negotiating the controversial amnesty bill with Catalan separatist parties.

On his X account, Puigdemont accused the judges of “politicizing their office and using it to subvert the rule of law.”

Puigdemont ran as the head of the Junts Per Catalunya party in the 2024 Catalan regional elections, in hopes he would be able to return home and take up political office.

Negotiations are still ongoing in Catalonia over government formation, after the election resulted in a highly fractured regional government – much like the Spanish government in Madrid.

One of the leaders of the left-wing separatist ERC party, Oriol Junqueras, who served prison time but was later pardoned, is also still barred from holding political office over the embezzlement charge.

It was widely expected that he would have that cleared from his record, paving his way to reenter politics.

In mid-June, Spain's board of prosecutors endorsed the government's amnesty bill and said all independence leaders should be pardoned for their crimes, including embezzlement.

Sanchez did not immediately comment.

Alberto Nunez Feijoo of the Popular Party, the country's main opposition leader, celebrated the ruling.

“The government won a majority to pass just one law, and it seems like they didn't even know how to do that right,” he told reporters in Salamanca.