The National Court that will judge Jordi Pujol, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia from 1980 to 2003, starting next week, has decided that he will appear via videoconference on Monday before the start of the first session “to examine” his state of health firsthand. Pujol, 95, has been hospitalized in a Barcelona hospital for pneumonia since last Saturday. For this event the magistrates also summoned the medical examiners who drafted the report on his state of health, as well as the parties involved in the present proceedings.
The trial against the most influential Catalan politician of the second half of the 20th century, who turned 95 in June, is scheduled to begin next Monday, November 24. It arrives after years of delays (caused, to a large extent, by maneuvers and resources promoted by the Pujol clan to prolong the time dedicated to the removal of the delicate documentation contained in the report). The oral hearing is not expected to conclude until mid-2026; and depositions of over 250 witnesses have been scheduled. The expectation is maximum, especially given the attempts of the independence movement to recover the figure of former president.
At the end of his investigations, Judge José de la Mata, in charge of directing the investigations, concluded that the family of the former Convergent leader had “taken advantage of their privileged position of ascendancy in Catalan political/social/economic life for decades to accumulate excessive wealth, directly linked to economic perceptions derived from corrupt activities”. Pujol himself publicly confessed in 2014 that he had hidden a fortune in Andorra for decades; even though he claimed that it was a “legacy” that his father Florenci left abroad to his daughter-in-law and grandchildren before his death – a theory that the Prosecutor’s Office rejects.
The Public Prosecutor is asking for nine years in prison for the former Catalan president. He also seeks prison sentences for his seven children: 29 years for the eldest Jordi Pujol Ferrusola; 14 years, for Josep; and eight years, for the rest (Pere, Oleguer, Oriol, Mireia and Marta)—. In addition to Pujol and his seven children, the National Court proposed to try the former Catalan president’s wife, Marta Ferrusola, although the case against her was dropped due to “severe dementia” before she died in 2024; and fifteen other people.
