Borbonic Spain

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