A question hovers over the start of the major corruption trial against the former president of the Generalitat of Catalonia Jordi Pujol, 95, and his seven children: is the former regional president healthy enough to face it? The National Court itself will have to answer this question this Monday, before the hearing against the family clan begins, which has been waiting for more than five years since judge José de la Mata concluded his investigations and concluded that its members have enriched themselves “excessively” through “illicit payments” they received due to their “privileged position of ancestry” in Catalan society. The court allowed the former Convergència leader to appear by video conference from Barcelona before the start of the first session in Madrid at 10am, to assess first-hand his mental and physical faculties – and decide what to do with him in the face of the long trial that awaits him, after forensic experts concluded that he is “unfit” -.
After years of waiting, the image of Jordi Pujol sitting in the dock becomes more difficult every day. For now the former politician has already avoided going to Madrid at the start of the trial. So avoid that photograph. On the afternoon of Saturday 15 November, the former Catalan president was admitted to the Sagrada Familia clinic in Barcelona for pneumonia. This circumstance drew attention to the National Court, which had already commissioned a previous forensic assessment of his state of health to rule on the matter. With the former convergent hospitalized, the court had to make its decision: it did so last Monday to announce that it would allow him to appear this Monday via videoconference. Four days later, Pujol left the medical center.
Multiple scenarios now open up. Once the state of health has been ascertained in person (during an event to be held before the first hearing of the trial, behind closed doors and without the presence of journalists, according to legal sources), the court will have to decide how to continue the proceedings against Pujol sr.
The defense puts on the table the possibility of directly dismissing the case against him. The same National Court had already adopted a similar measure in 2021, when judge Santiago Pedraz left his wife Marta Ferrusola, who died in July 2024, due to “severe dementia” out of the trial. former president He would not have to stand trial and the magistrates could not convict him with a sentence, even if they could reflect in their decision facts concerning him which emerge in the hearing.
As El PAÍS explained, the court has on the table a medical report which establishes that Pujol Sr. does not have “the procedural capacity necessary to be able to defend himself in a self-sufficient manner”; and who presents a “diagnosis of a mixed major neurocognitive disorder, Alzheimer’s and vascular type”, as well as “moderate cognitive impairment” which is “irreversible” and “evolutionary”.
Magistrates can also suspend the proceedings against Pujol and continue with the hearing for the other defendants. On previous occasions, the National Court has adopted this measure when there are signs (even if remote) that the person concerned may recover. For example, in a recent trial of retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, his partner Rafael Redondo was removed to stand trial separately on another date because he had undergone an operation shortly before. Likewise, in the first major trial against the former State Police officer, he was excluded breast die to my fellow commissioner Enrique García Castaño because he had a stroke in the middle of the sessions.
But, in the event that it is finally decided that the former Catalan president should be tried, the defense has dropped several possibilities to alleviate the months that the trial lasts. Such as forcing him to go to court only on specific days (an option that was seen in the last trial against Gürtel case); that he is allowed to follow the entire process remotely; or even have the ability to plead as a defendant electronically.
His own family had said in early November that the former politician wanted to appear and speak: “My father wants to be put on trial,” his son Oriol Pujol Ferrusola summarized in an interview. “(He is) sufficiently lucid (…) He is not a useless man nor to be disqualified.”
He was sentenced to 9 years in prison
The hearing will begin this Monday at the headquarters of the National Court of San Fernando de Henares, located in an industrial area of this town on the outskirts of Madrid. The trial is expected to last until mid-2026 and will begin after years of delays; caused, to a large extent, by the maneuvers and resources promoted by the Pujol clan to prolong the time dedicated to the removal of the delicate documentation contained in the summary.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office is asking for a nine-year prison sentence for the crimes of illicit association and money laundering. former presidentwho was a key figure in the anti-Franco struggle and the most influential Catalan politician of the second half of the 20th century – he held command of the Generalitat for more than two decades: from 1980 to 2003 -.
According to what the Public Prosecutor underlines in the indictment, Pujol Sr. “took advantage” of his status as head of the regional executive and leader of Convergència to “weave a network of clientelism, to the point of establishing a network that implied” that he and “some entrepreneurs connected to him shared the exceptional advantages of public procurement”.
At the end of his investigations in 2020, Judge José De la Mata declared that the Pujol family had accumulated an irregular “excessive wealth”, fueled by “various sources”. According to the summary, there are “illicit” funds coming from entrepreneurs who wanted to influence in their favor “in prizes, concessions, changes in urban classification…, throughout the Catalan geographical space”. Others also paid with the sole aim of “gratiating themselves” with the family or maintaining a “good relationship” with them to benefit from it in the future.
Indeed, according to the magistrate, there is money from an “unknown source”. Naturally, both De la Mata and Anticorrupción exclude that all these sums come from an inheritance that Florenci Pujol, Jordi Pujol’s father, left abroad to his daughter-in-law and grandchildren before his death, as the defense claims.
In addition to Jordi Pujol Sr., about twenty people sit on the bench. Among them, several entrepreneurs and the seven children of the former presidentwho allegedly participated in money laundering operations. The Prosecutor’s Office underlines that the former leader of Convergència and his wife, Marta Ferrusola, “directed the operations of concealment and discovery” of the illicit profits; but adds that two of his children (Jordi and Josep) “managed the benefits” and the others (Pere, Oleguer, Oriol, Mireia and Marta) “benefited directly and knowingly” and “contributed to their concealment”. For this reason the Public Prosecutor is asking for 29 years of imprisonment for the eldest son, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola; 14 years for Josep; and eight years for the other five remaining children.
