The Government will return the amounts of the fines of the first state of alarm

The Government will return the amounts of the sanctions to the citizens fined during the first state of alarm for failing to comply with the confinement measures. A work team gathered this week, made up of a delegation from the Ministries of Territorial Policy and Economy, and the Public Treasury, has ruled that the government delegations and sub-delegations process the returns. These instances will do it ex officio, that is, without the sanctioned having to initiate an administrative process, as reported this Friday by Territorial Policy sources. The deadlines in which the return process will be completed have not passed.

The measure stems from the decision of the Constitutional Court, last July, to annul the toughest measures of the decree of the state of alarm that the Government had approved at the beginning of the health emergency last year. The court of guarantees considered that the appropriate figure to agree on the confinement of the population was that of the state of exception, which can only be decreed by Parliament at the proposal of the Executive. The unconstitutionality ruling was open to the return of the amount of the sanctions imposed on private citizens in the period in which the state of alarm was in effect: from March 14 to June 21, 2020.

Now, with the advice of a computer team that has been part of the working group, the Government will proceed to return “ex officio” the amount that was collected in the sanctions imposed in compliance with the state of alarm. According to Territorial Policy sources, citizens must identify a bank account number for the amounts to be reimbursed.

The Constitutional Court will also determine the legality or illegality of the second state of alarm, from October 25, 2020 to June 9.

The final balance left 1,142,127 fines imposed throughout Spain in the first state of alarm and at least 220,296 sanctions in the second, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior provided in March, when one year after the beginning of the first of the states of alarm. The Ministry of Territorial Policy and Public Function updated the figure in May when informing that the delegations and sub-delegations of the Government had already resolved 172,482 files with sanction, 50.1% of the total.