AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL report 2017-18
[...]
SPAIN
Kingdom of Spain
Head of state: King Felipe VI de Borbón Head of government: Mariano Rajoy
The rights to freedom of expression and
peaceful assembly of Catalan independence
supporters were disproportionally restricted.
Dozens of people were prosecuted for
“glorification of terrorism” and “humiliation
of victims” on social media. Law
enforcement officials used excessive force
against demonstrators peacefully resisting
the enforcement of the High Court of
Justice of Catalonia's ruling stopping the
Catalan independence referendum. Spain
relocated fewer asylum-seekers than it had
pledged to under the EU relocation scheme,
and resettled fewer refugees than it had
committed to. Thousands of people
continued to face forced evictions. The
authorities continued to close investigations
into crimes under international law
committed during the Civil War and the
Franco regime.
BACKGROUND
Two violent attacks took place in Catalonia in
August, leaving 16 people dead and several
others wounded. The armed group Islamic
State (IS) claimed responsibility. Six people
believed to be responsible were killed by
security forces, and four others were arrested
and prosecuted for being implicated in the
attacks and as members of the group that
carried out the attacks.
On 1 October, the government of Catalonia,
an autonomous region in the northeast, held
a referendum on the region’s independence,
in defiance of several Constitutional Court
rulings. On 17 October, the Constitutional
Court declared unconstitutional the regional
law on which the referendum was based and
confirmed its precautionary measure which it
had adopted on 7 September, aimed at
preventing the referendum. On 27 October,
the pro-independence political groups in the
Catalonian regional parliament unilaterally
declared the independence of Catalonia. On
the same day, the Senate authorized the
Spanish government to adopt measures
pursuant to Article 155 of the Spanish
Constitution, effectively suspending the
region’s autonomy. On 21 December, new
regional elections in Catalonia took place.
The party which obtained more votes than
any other single party was a nonindependence
party, but overall the elections
delivered the majority in the regional
parliament to the combined proindependence
parties.
FREEDOMS OF EXPRESSION AND
ASSEMBLY
Following the Constitutional Court decision of
7 September aimed at preventing the
referendum, some authorities
disproportionately restricted the rights to
freedom of expression and peaceful
assembly. Courts in Madrid and Vitoria in the
Basque country prohibited two public
assemblies aimed at supporting the
referendum. The municipality of Castelldefels
in Catalonia adopted a blanket ban on the
use of public spaces for assemblies aimed at
supporting or protesting against the
referendum.
On 16 October, a High Court judge ordered
the pre-trial detention of Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez, the presidents of two proCatalan-independence
organizations. They
were detained and charged with sedition, a
broadly defined offence, in connection with
protests they organized in Barcelona on 20
and 21 September to, according to a judge,
oppose a lawful police operation. In
November, the Supreme Court took charge of
the proceedings against Jordi Sánchez and
Jordi Cuixart. The Supreme Court extended
the investigation against them to the offence
of rebellion.
Dozens of people were prosecuted for
“glorification of terrorism” and “humiliation of
victims” on social media networks. In many
instances, authorities pressed criminal
charges against people who had expressed
opinions that did not constitute incitement to
a terrorism-related offence and fell within the
permissible forms of expression under
international human rights law. Twenty people
were convicted in the course of the year. In
March, Cassandra Vera was convicted and
given a suspended sentence of one year`s
imprisonment for “humiliation of victims of
terrorism”. She had published jokes on
Twitter about ETA´s 1973 killing of Carrero
Blanco, a Prime Minister under the Franco
regime.
In January, the investigating judge
dismissed charges of incitement to hatred
against Alfonso Lázaro de la Fuente and Raúl
García Pérez, professional puppeteers who in
February 2016 were subjected to pre-trial
detention for five days on charges of
“glorifying terrorism” and incitement to
hatred. The charges of “glorifying terrorism”
were dismissed in 2016.
Administrative penalties continued to be
imposed on private individuals, human rights
activists and journalists on the basis of the
Law on Public Security, which could
constitute unlawful restrictions on the rights
to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly
and information.
Mercé Alcocer, a journalist at Catalunya
Radio, was fined EUR601 for disobeying a
police order. She crossed an unmarked
police line in her attempt to interview a
witness when she was covering a corruption
case which was being investigated by the
High Court. She appealed, arguing she had
stepped back when told to and that her
account could be substantiated by footage
from security cameras. The footage was not
admitted as evidence, and her appeal was
pending at the end of the year.
[... ]
EXCESSIVE USE OF FORCE
Law enforcement officials policing protests on
1 October in Catalonia used excessive force
against peaceful protesters who were
opposing a police operation. The police fired
blank cartridges and rubber bullets, seriously
injuring one person and causing him to lose
the sight in one eye.
[...]
IMPUNITY
Spanish authorities continued to close
investigations into crimes under international
law committed during the Civil War and the
Franco regime. They argued that it would not
be possible to investigate the crimes
reported, such as enforced disappearances
and torture, in view of, among other things,
the Amnesty Act and the statute of
limitations. The authorities continued to fail to
take measures to locate and identify the
remains of victims of enforced
disappearances and extrajudicial executions,
leaving families and organizations to
undertake exhumation projects without state
support.
In February, Mexico’s Attorney General’s
Office started an investigation into the so called
“stolen babies” case, making Mexico
the second country to investigate crimes
under international law committed in Spain
during the Civil War and the Franco regime.
The investigation concerned the case of a
woman born in Spain in 1968 and handed
over to a Mexican family, reportedly after
having been abducted from her family. In
September, the UN Working Group on
Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances
stated that this case constituted a new
opportunity for Spain to fully co-operate in
the 2014 amendments to universal
jurisdiction legislation were invoked by the
Spanish judiciary to not investigate crimes
under international law, such as enforced
disappearances and torture, committed in
Syria and Venezuela in 2017 against Spanish
nationals.e investigations carried out by other states
into enforced disappearances which
occurred in Spain
