The former president of the Generalitat Jordi Pujol is now medically discharged and has been able to return to his home in Barcelona. After midday Pujol left the Clinica Sagrada Família, where he had been hospitalized since last Sunday due to pneumonia. The 95-year-old former Catalan president left the health center in his car and entered his home on Barcelona’s General Miter ring road (very close to the clinic) through the building’s car park door.
The medical discharge comes three days before the start of the trial against the Pujol Ferrusola family over their fortune in Andorra before the National Court. Due to his advanced age and delicate state of health, the patriarch of the family was summoned to testify via videoconference as part of a preventive appearance procedure, set for 10 am, during which, in addition to Pujol himself, the court summoned the medical examiners to ratify their report, in which they reflected that the former president is not capable of testifying.
Jordi Pujol’s defense has asked the National Court to dismiss the case against the former Catalan president over his undeclared fortune in Andorra, arguing that his “physical and cognitive” deterioration prevents him from facing trial. Cristóbal Martell, defense lawyer, asks this in an appeal collected by the Efe agency.
Pujol’s defense underlines that the experts who assessed the conditions of the former Catalan president have indicated that he presents a “moderate” cognitive impairment, “irreversible, progressive, evolutionary and without effective treatments” and that, therefore, “he is not in the physical and cognitive conditions to appear in a trial, nor does he have the procedural capacity necessary to defend himself in a self-sufficient manner”.
Based on this expert opinion, the defense requests that the National Court agrees to the dismissal of the case concerning the former Catalan president, since, as is underlined, he cannot “validly defend himself, that is, understand the object of the plenary session in its complexity and assume a dialectical role of defense with respect to it”.
