Talks between the government partners continue, but Sumar announced on Tuesday morning the first agreements with the PSOE to reform the Citizen Security Law – known as gag law― and the Penal Code on freedom of expression. Among others, the modification of the latter aims to repeal the crimes of insults against the Crown and contemplates a “public reparation” for those people who have been charged, but whose judicial case is subsequently archived. The agreement, closed in the last hours, is part of the measures of democratic regeneration that will be presented this Wednesday in Congress by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. The agreement, according to the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, also includes the Law of Advertising and Institutional Communication, which will deprive of public funding those media that violate the codes of ethics in journalistic activity.
Díaz gave the first headline as soon as the day started from Brussels, where she is participating this Tuesday in the Council of Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumers (EPSCO), by announcing an agreement between her party and the PSOE to “repeal” the gag law. In reality, it is not a repeal, but rather modifications to a regulation approved by Mariano Rajoy’s Government in 2015, and which until December 2022 (the latest statistical data available) has led to the imposition of nearly two million fines. One of Sumar’s spokespersons in Congress and negotiator, Enrique Santiago, made statements to the press in which he implicitly corrected the words of the vice president when speaking of a “deep reform” that had already been embodied in a bill in May that has not yet begun its parliamentary journey.
This text collected the progress made by the parties of the investiture bloc during the last legislature to reform the law, and which achieved agreements to modify 36 of the 54 articles of the law, although it finally derailed in March 2023 due to differences with ERC and Bildu in another four. This Tuesday, Santiago has expressed hope that in a short space of time the Government parties will reach an agreement with the rest of the parliamentary forces in favour of changing the law – in addition to the votes of the two Executive parties, it would need those of the PNV, EH Bildu, ERC, Junts and Podemos – although deputies from some of these groups have assured this newspaper that there have been no meetings to address this issue for months. Sumar added confusion to this supposed “repeal” by distributing a note among journalists in which it restricted the agreement with the PSOE on the gag law to a point in a single article, 36.23, on the dissemination of images of members of the security forces in the exercise of their duties, which was already amended by the Constitutional Court in a ruling in January 2021 and on which the parties in favour of the reform had already reached an agreement in the last legislature for a new wording.
As for the Penal Code, it is agreed to suppress the crime against religious feelings or public ridicule, reflected in article 525; also the repeal of crimes against the Crown, included in articles 490.3 and 491 (those that served to condemn the humorists of the magazine Thursday); and insults to the Government of the Nation, the General Council of the Judiciary, the Constitutional Court and the Army included in 504. This is not the first time that both parties have reached an agreement in this regard. In September 2022, during the previous legislature, the PSOE joined a proposal to decriminalize the crimes of insults to the Crown and outrage to the symbols of Spain supported by Unidas Podemos, ERC and EH Bildu. That bill proposed the deletion of two articles and a section of another from the Penal Code to withdraw that specific legal protection from the King and his family and stop considering actions such as burning the flag as a crime.
Finally, the agreement with the PSOE includes a final section relating to the modification of the Organic Law 1/1982 on civil protection of the right to honor, personal and family privacy and one’s own image to include a “public reparation” in the cases of “endless judicial instructions when the oral trial is not opened, but innumerable headlines are published affecting the honour or good name of the person under investigation”. In a press conference, Santiago has justified that “people cannot be subjected” “for free” to “very long” procedures that ultimately come to nothing and that society remains with the idea that these individuals have criminal responsibilities, but he has recognised that there is still no agreed mechanism for such reparation. Sumar proposes that this be done through a “publication” in the media that could be in the form of an advertisement and that should be paid for, in his opinion, by the Judiciary.
The parliamentary spokesman for IU has also pointed out that there are agreements to address the reform of the law on official secrets and develop the law on professional secrecy for journalists, although there is no final text for the moment.
What matters most is what happens closer to home. To make sure you don’t miss anything, subscribe.
KEEP READING
Negotiations between the government partners have been developing discreetly in recent weeks. The first vice-president, María Jesús Montero, and the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, participated in these conversations on behalf of the PSOE. In Sumar, the dialogue was led by the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, and the deputy of the United Left, Enrique Santiago.
Urtasun himself, in a press conference on Monday, hours before the agreement was reached, expressed his party’s desire that the plan announced by Sánchez on Wednesday be as “ambitious as possible”, although he qualified that this will only be “a first package”, opening the door to new announcements after the summer. Among Sumar’s demands in judicial matters, according to Santiago, is also the adoption of mechanisms that prevent situations of blockage such as that experienced for more than five years with the CGPJ, the modification of the powers of this body in accordance with the constitutional mandate, a reform for the democratisation of access to the judicial career, a change in the mechanisms of operation of the administration of justice or the recovery of the civil liability of judges that the Rajoy Government eliminated. All of these aspects are aspects on which there is no agreement with the socialists.
#PSOE #Sumar #agree #repeal #crimes #Crown #reparation #filing #judicial #cases