Tag: Spain

A specter is haunting Spain — the specter of illiberalism: A young democracy facing its ghosts

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Rubén Díez (Professor of Sociology at Complutense University)
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Populism shows a natural tendency to strain the independence of public functions, the autonomy of civil society and media, as well as the institutional mechanisms regulating the civil sphere in liberal democracies. Obama reminded us of this during the funeral of Republican John McCain in September 2018, implicitly referring to President Trump. A portion of Obama’s eulogy highlighted the rules and principles of rational-legal legitimization that govern our democracies. These include adherence to the duties and responsibilities of public office, as well as the norms regulating voting and the party system. Civil organizations, alongside the political class, must take responsibility for safeguarding these principles to prevent populism from taking root within their ranks and political entities. As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt remind us in “How Democracies Die”, more essentialist forms of democracy—with demagogic speeches and leaders, populist organizations, plebiscitary practices, and Caesarism—civil institutions see a reduction in their mediating and arbitrating capacity for the multiplicity of material and ideal interests, hindering the expression of civil solidarity. The leader, party, or movement positions itself as the voice of the people, appealing to collective identities exclusively articulated in a binary key of belonging.

Illiberalism in its most extreme forms, especially when it seizes power, thrives by co-opting civil institutions and intermediate spaces. In addition, it silences or sidelines those who articulate alternative positions to its political project. This is achieved by subverting the law and discrediting dissenting voices often through the civil exclusion of discordant voices. If the ultimate expression of this idealized political project successfully materializes in a specific place and time, it opens the door for an anti-democratic populist project to crystallize. Some recent examples include traits of this ideal definition of illiberal scenarios: the leadership of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Law and Justice in Poland, the Brexit referendum in 2016, the declaration of independence in Catalonia in 2017, and the Trump administration in the USA. Sadly, a progressive and accelerated trend of democratic degradation may be observed in Spain as 2023 ends, following the formation of a new coalition government led by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) with the support of left-wing populist, nationalist, and separatist forces.

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Editorial of December 2023

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By Alessandra Silveira (Editor)
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Is there a threat to the rule of law in the EU as a consequence of the government agreement in Spain and the institutional crisis in Portugal?

The Government agreement in Spain (the amnesty proposal for the Catalan secession process) and the institutional crisis in Portugal (the resignation of the Government due to signs of influence peddling) have an impact on the functioning of the European Union (EU) because they could jeopardise the value of the rule of law on which the Union is founded (Article 2 TEU).

What is the meaning of the principle (i.e. the legal norm) of the rule of law in the EU? It means that the exercise of power is subject to legal rules and procedures (i.e. legislative, executive, and judicial procedures) that allow citizens to monitor (and possibly challenge) the legitimacy of decisions taken by public authorities. The basic idea of the rule of law is therefore to submit power to the law. This fundamental norm conditions the accession of a candidate State to the EU – and authorises the Union to monitor the proper functioning of the rule of law in the various Member States.

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On the reform of sexual offences in Spain

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Julia Ropero Carrasco and Sandra López de Zubiría Díaz (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid)
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The regulation of so-called “sexual crimes” has traditionally been accompanied by significant and heated debates. If we refer to its historical regulation, it is possible to see how “honour” or “morality” have clouded adequate protection of the victim, essentially due to the mistaken identification of the harmfulness of these acts. From 1995 onwards, with the so-called “Penal Code of Democracy”, it seemed that the regulation had been translated into important improvements, especially by consolidating “sexual freedom” as the legal right to be defended, instead of the previous obsolete conceptions. However, despite the commendable effort to abandon the conventional “sexual morality”, the truth is that this reform brought with it a lack of protection for victims, especially in the area of minors and trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, which led to different revisions accompanied in turn by controversy over the timeliness of the reforms.

For this reason, the controversies surrounding the regulation (and its application) of sexual offences have not ceased to be present, although it is in the wake of the well-known case of “La Manada[1]” and the various sentences issued on the matter that Spanish society has been particularly rallied and, with it, the debate on the appropriateness of criminal reform in this area has been reignited.

As a current context, it is necessary to pay attention to the data extracted from the 2019[2] Macro-survey on violence against women, as well as from the Report on Social Perception of Sexual Violence[3], which shows the prominence of sexual violence in women’s lives, the problem of under-reporting of the facts and, more worryingly, the maintenance of stereotypes about sexual violence (especially with regard to the conception of the “rapist” as a sick person and not as one of the perverse derivations of a patriarchal order that maintains a strong discrimination against women in the sexual sphere and a definition of roles that promotes male domination).

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Competition and corona crisis in Spain

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 by María Pilar Canedo Arrillaga, Professor of Law, University of Deusto

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1. Spain is one of the countries that has been more seriously affected by the COVID19. In order to protect the health of citizens, the Spanish Government adopted some rules that radically limit the social and economic activity in Spain imposing the obligation to stay at home for citizens for a long period and ordering what has been called “the hibernation of the economic activity” for 15 days in all the non essential sectors (mostly health services, security and food)[i]. Those rules are having a dramatic effect in the economy especially in the labour market. This has implied the most relevant rise in the unemployment figures in Spain since the arrival of democracy in 1978[ii]. Also, they are having huge implications in the protection of legal certainty and social and personal rights of the citizens. Those consequences have a more relevant impact in the weaker actors in society both from the social and economic perspective and therefore the Government has decided to take measures with the aim of reducing the impact of the crisis in economy in general and, in particular to help those more harmed by the situation[iii].

2. It is evident that the most relevant overriding reason of general interest, which is human life, needs protection. That implies limits in the rights of the people that we could not foresee some months ago and those radical changes in social and economic behaviours will have impact in our business and industrial economy not only in the short term.

In these circumstances we can hear more radical voices claiming for a change in our economic model towards one in which the public sector controls different aspects of society, including company’s ownership[iv]. Others claim for public control of economic activity and/or business behaviour[v]. Others claim for higher protection to the companies so they can contribute to lower the destruction of employment[vi].

Also, we can witness some (infrequent) business behaviours that profit the situation of need and legal exception and maximize their benefits in abusive ways that fall under different prohibitions of the law. Some of them, with criminal implications, others, with labour, tax, social security or competition law[vii].

Dealing with the latter, there is an increasingly relevant movement that asks for a more lenient application of the competition law rules and principles in reference both with the administrative and legislative measures adopted to tackle with this situation and its application and with the enforcement activities conducted by the competition authorities.
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Editorial of October 2019

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 by Tamara Álvarez Robles, Lecturer at the University of Vigo

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On the reform of national law on data protection: the special incorporation of digital rights in Spain

The reform of the Spanish Organic Law on Data Protection (LO 3/2018), to adapt it to the General Regulation of Data Protection has introduced together with the European requirements a catalogue of digital rights. Title X “Guarantee of digital rights” has meant, undoubtedly one of the biggest novelties to data protection regulations. It is composed of a set of Articles, from 79 to 97, which present, for the first time in the Spanish national legislative sphere, the new generation of digital rights[i], inter alia, right to Internet neutrality, right to digital security, right to digital education, protection of minors on the Internet, right to rectification on the Internet, right to privacy and use of digital devices in the workplace, right to digital disconnection in the workplace, right to digital testament.

The inclusion in-extremis of the present Title X, of digital rights, through amendment of the Congress of Deputies dated April 18, 2018, responds to the fundamental importance, to the ever-present and dominating reality of the Internet, which reaches all spheres of our lives. That is why, Organic Law 3/2018 in section IV of the Preamble already points to the involvement of public authorities through the provision of public policies (Article 9.2 SC) in order to make effective the catalogue of digital rights based on the Principle of Equality (Article 14 SC), stating that: “it is the responsibility of the public authorities to promote policies that make effective the rights of citizens on the Internet, promoting the equality of citizens and the groups in which they are integrated in order to possible the full exercise of fundamental rights in the digital reality”.
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On the Catalan separatism and the political comprehension: democracy is (must be) more than voting…

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 by Alessandra Silveira, Editor

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On October 1st, we watched stupefied and live the events around the unilateral declaration of the independence of Catalonia. The European Commission has resisted the persevering attempt of the Catalan separatists of converting the Catalan question into a European question.  President Juncker considers that is an internal issue of Spain and the decisions of the Spanish courts and of the Spanish Parliament should be respected. Unpleased, the separatists spread on social medias messages claiming the application of article 7, Treaty on the European Union, i. e., calling on the suspension of the rights of a Member State due to the use of military force against its population.

We shall then make a brief exercise to test the conformity of such argument and try to understand why the EU has resisted taking parting in this imbroglio. What were the Spanish police doing in the voting pools? They were assuring the execution of judicial decisions – of the Spanish Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Catalonia itself – aimed at preventing the realization of an unconstitutional and illegal referendum, organised in clear violation of the rule of law. Or, more concretely, the policemen were apprehending documents and instruments destined to facilitate the voting, especially ballot boxes, computer equipment, ballot papers and propaganda papers – and reacted against the ones who were trying to hinder their action.

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The Almaraz debate – it’s not in Spain, it’s not in Portugal, it’s all around…

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by Sophie Perez Fernandes, Junior Editor
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The risk society is a non-knowledge society. Ulrich Beck has long demonstrated that the explosion of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl (26 April 1986) coincided with an «explosion of non-knowledge» in an entanglement that requires a rethinking of the conceptual and institutional constants of the modern world, such as the concepts of rights and human dignity, as well as those of sovereignty and state government[i].

On January 16, the Portuguese government filed a complaint to the European Commission against Spain concerning the construction of a nuclear waste storage facility at the Almaraz nuclear power plant (the news can be found here). Operating since the early 1980s, the Almaraz nuclear power plant is located along the Tagus River about 100 kilometres from Portugal, bordering the districts of Castelo Branco and Portalegre. The construction of the storage facility is intended to extend the operation of the Almaraz nuclear power plant, which has been presenting several problems, especially security problems. Portugal claims that there has been a violation of the EIA Directive, in addition to requesting the suspension of the construction of the Almaraz nuclear waste storage facility.

The EIA Directive – Directive 2011/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 – applies to the assessment of environmental effects of certain public and private projects which are likely to have significant effects on the environment. It updates 4 earlier directives (Directives 85/337/EEC, 97/11/EC, 2003/35/EC and 2009/31/EC) and applies from 17 February 2012. Furthermore, Directive 2011/92 has been amended in 2014 by the Directive 2014/52/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014. The revised EIA Directive entered into force on 15 May 2014 and Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with it by 16 May 2017. It should also be mentioned that safety of nuclear installations is also regulated by EU law, namely by the Council Directive 2009/71/Euratom of 25 June 2009 establishing a Community framework for the nuclear safety of nuclear installations (transposition deadline expired since 22 July 2011), amended by the Council Directive 2014/87/Euratom of 8 July 2014 (transposition deadline expires the 15 August 2017).

As stated above, Portugal claims that there has been a violation of the EIA Directive. The EIA procedure laid down in this directive can be summarized as follows: i) the developer (the applicant for authorisation for a private or public project which falls within the scope of application of the EIA Directive) may request the competent authority to say what should be covered by the EIA information to be provided (scoping stage); ii) the developer must provide information on the environmental impact (EIA report); iii) the environmental authorities and the public (and, as will be explained below, the eventually affected Member States) must be informed and consulted; iv) the competent authority decides, taken into consideration the results of consultations. The public is then informed of the decision taken and can challenge it before the courts.

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