The National High Court reopens the case against Josep Lluís Alay, Jami Matamala and the two Mossos agents who travelled with Puigdemont to Germany

The judge conducting the preliminary investigation at the National High Court had provisionally dismissed the case, finding that the events in question could not constitute a crime of concealment because those with Puigdemont could not have known that the European Arrest Warrant against him had been reactivated. The Criminal Chamber of the National High Court rules in favour of the Prosecutor’s Office, which had appealed against the shelving of the case with the argument that Puigdemont’s friends, Alay and Matamala, as well as the two Mossos agents, were ‘necessarily’ aware of Puigdemont’s status as a ‘fugitive’ when they travelled with him in the car during his return trip from Finland to Brussels. In August 2020, the judge dismisses the case against Alay and Matamala, arguing that they were not civil servants, had not driven the vehicle and had not provided Puigdemont with assistance of any other kind in this regard.