The Spanish supreme court judge investigating the Catalan independence referendum has asked Spain’s finance minister to explain why he claimed that no public money was used to stage the vote, saying the assertion contradicts one of the key allegations facing the former regional president and other members of his sacked government.



Carles Puigdemont and several of his former ministers are currently under investigation over allegations of misuse of public funds, rebellion and sedition relating to their roles in last October’s illegal vote on splitting from Spain.

However, in an interview published on Monday, the finance minister, Cristóbal Montoro, told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that while he did not know where the funds for the vote had come from, “I do know it wasn’t public money”.



The claim prompted a ruling from the judge, Pablo Llarena, two days later ordering Montoro “to provide, as soon as possible, the specific objective basis for those assertions”.

Llarena also noted that several of those under investigation had seized on the minister’s statement as proof that the misuse of public funds allegations were unfounded.



“Some of those under investigation,” he wrote on Wednesday, “have based their arguments on statements from the finance minister in which he allegedly expresses the certainty that no public money was spent on the vote held in Catalonia on 1 October 2017.”

The judge also said such statements “contradicted evidence sources gathered during this investigation”.

Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium following the referendum and the subsequent unilateral independence declaration, is currently in Germany facing extradition to Spain under an international arrest warrant.

Two weeks ago, a court in Schleswig-Holstein rejected the extradition request over the rebellion allegations but said Puigdemont could be extradited over possible misuse of public funds.

On Tuesday, the Spanish supreme court hit out at the German court, accusing it of “a lack of rigour” in its handling of the rebellion allegations.

The legal investigations come as Catalan MPs struggle to form a new government after last December’s elections, which saw the pro-independence parties retain their parliamentary majority.

Efforts to reappoint Puigdemont have come to nothing, while attempts to invest two other jailed Catalan leaders have been headed off by the Spanish courts.

If a new government is not in place by 22 May, the region will return to the polls in July.

On Wednesday, the speaker of the Catalan parliament said a new election was “not at all in the interest of Catalonia” and accused the Spanish authorities of thwarting the political process.

“I think that this question should be put to the Spanish government and to the courts: how long will they continue to block [Catalonia’s president] from taking office?” said Roger Torrent.



“It is the Spanish government and the institutions of the state, and in particular the courts, that are blocking the swearing-in from happening.”

Catalonia has been under the control of the Spanish government since the end of October, when the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, used the constitution to sack Puigdemont’s government and call elections.