Civicus Monitor
    FACTS
    PROTEST DATA
    GLOBAL FINDINGS
    WATCHLIST
    EXPLORE
    ABOUT
Civicus Monitor
    FACTS
    PROTEST DATA
    GLOBAL FINDINGS
    WATCHLIST
    EXPLORE
    ABOUT
Civicus Monitor
    FACTS
    PROTEST DATA
    GLOBAL FINDINGS
    WATCHLIST
    EXPLORE
    ABOUT

Civil society remains concerned over chilling effect of gag law on free speech

Spain’s counter-terror law crushes satire: Amnesty International https://t.co/BjMfI7UYXe pic.twitter.com/6h3xea3SIz

— The Local Spain (@TheLocalSpain) March 13, 2018

Expression

Article 578 of the Spanish penal code has been widely criticised both by international and Spanish human rights defenders because of the law's potential to restrict free speech. Amnesty International's 2017/2018 annual report says:

“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".

In one case that exemplifies Amnesty's analysis, student Cassandra Vera was banned from obtaining public-sector work for seven years and given a suspended sentence of one year's imprisonment for tweeting jokes about the 1973 assassination of a Spanish prime minister.


Fiscalía AN estima que mensajes publicados en Twitter entre 2012 y 2016 no son constitutivos de un delito de enaltecimiento del terrorismo porque no propician o alientan, aunque sea de manera indirecta, una situación de riesgo para las personas o derechos https://t.co/HZEmj5YozZ

— RIS (@ris_org) April 26, 2018

Spain’s supreme court overturned the national court’s decision and quashed Vera’s conviction. Lydia Vicente Márquez, the executive director of Rights International Spain (RIS), told the CIVICUS Monitor about two other court decisions in which Twitter users charged with glorifying terrorism were acquitted because the court concluded that their actions did not promote a situation of real danger. RIS and other NGOs welcomed an initiative from Izquierda Unida, a minority left-wing parliamentary group, to file a draft bill in Congress to derogate a number of offences in the law which, according to civil society, curtail freedom of expression.

In a separate development, two Catalan separatists were sentenced on defamation charges for burning a large, upside-down portrait of the royal couple at a march. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, however, found that burning that photograph should be viewed as political criticism of the monarcchy and thus such an act is protected under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Spanish constitution.

More than five million people went on strike in Spain on #8M to show their support for the feminist struggle in a huge movement that many consider a historic moment in the struggle for gender equality. https://t.co/xSsVbMq93O pic.twitter.com/Wy2QrpE65I

— Global Voices (@globalvoices) March 16, 2018

Peaceful Assembly

On 8th March, reports estimate that five million people participated in Spain’s first nationwide “feminist strike”. The strike sought to shed light on sexual discrimination, domestic violence and the wage gap in Spanish society. According to a recent Spanish study, on average female employees are paid 12.7 percent less for doing the same job as their male colleagues.The action was supported by some of Spain’s best-known female politicians, including Manuela Carmena, mayor of Madrid, and Ada Colau, mayor of Barcelona.

The strike was mostly peaceful, though the police were called in to stop participants from cutting off central thoroughfares in Barcelona, where picketing groups managed to temporarily bring key parts of the city to a standstill.

Gag law turns three

Spain's infamous “gag law”, which seriously restricts freedom of assembly in Spain, by, for example, imposing fines in case of spontaneous peaceful protests has just turned three years old. Citizens celebrated the occasion by holding a protest against the law.


Civic Space Developments
Country
Spain
Country rating
Narrowed
Category
Latest Developments
Tags
Date Posted

27.04.2018

Back to civic space developments

Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Site by DEV | Login

Privacy Policy

Contact us privacy@civicus.org