In June, six years have passed since the motion of censure that expelled Mariano Rajoy from Moncloa. Pedro Sánchez then took power, first with his party alone, then in coalition with Unidas Podemos, with a pending reform program that he has been busy with. But six years and three legislatures later, a whole battery of promises regarding democratic regeneration remains pending. The repeal of the gag law, a new law on official secrets or the elimination of the crime of insulting the Crown are still dormant in Congress waiting for the government to address them in the new plan that it wants to promote in the new political course.
Sánchez promised a few weeks ago to implement a series of measures aimed at democratizing the State. A plan conceived following the five days of reflection that took place in May, when the judge opened an investigation against his partner, Begoña Gómez, based on a complaint containing newspaper clippings and some fake news. In his last appearance in Congress, he gave more details about this project, which focused above all on media transparency. And he also announced that the Government would meet with the parliamentary groups to listen to their proposals in order to prepare this battery of measures.
And in these meetings, the executive partners put on the table these three measures that are still awaiting approval. Podemos, which in addition to demanding the rupture of the pact with the PP on the judiciary, reminded its interlocutors of the need to repeal the gag law, a demand also shared by the rest of the groups. And the PNV, for example, focused its demands on a new law on official secrets like the one it already presented to Congress a few months ago.
Gag Law
The repeal of the gag law was one of Pedro Sánchez’s main campaign promises before he arrived at La Moncloa. It was also one of Podemos’ main demands before it came to power and that is why it was reflected in the agreement between the PSOE and Unidas Podemos for the first progressive coalition. Despite everything, the Citizen Security Law, promoted by Mariano Rajoy’s government to restrict the right to protest, has been in force for longer under the parliamentary majority that promised to repeal it than under the executive that promoted it.
Congress was on the verge of dismantling this text last year, after a tortuous negotiation between the parliamentary partners and the government. These conversations clashed on four points: the use of rubber bullets – which this rule does not regulate –, hot returns, fines for disobedience and lack of respect for authority. ERC and EH Bildu demanded the elimination of these four points, the most “harmful”, according to their arguments, and the PSOE rejected these demands, which it considered “excuses”.
The use of rubber bullets was not regulated in the 2015 law and the permissibility of hot returns was included in an additional provision of this text, but the government has asked to take this into account in future legislative reform.
In this legislature, Sumar registered a proposal that saved all the agreements reached in previous years and again left aside these four controversial points, in order to reopen a discussion in Congress with the rest of the groups. This proposal, the parliamentary group defended, dismantled 98% of the gag law.
However, in mid-July, the second vice-president of the government, Yolanda Díaz, assured that she had reached an agreement with the PSOE for the repeal of this norm, which finally only included the modification of one point of the text, in reference to the dissemination of police images, something much less ambitious than what was agreed in the last legislature and what was registered by this group in Congress a few months ago.
ERC and EH Bildu continue to maintain their red lines on this law, as was confirmed during Sánchez’s appearance last month, and they do not seem willing this time to vote for a reform that does not address the four points that generated conflict in the old negotiation.
Official Secrets Act
Although it is not included in the coalition agreement, the government has been working during the last legislature on a reform of the Official Secrets Act. Just two years ago, in August 2022, the government presented its own draft reform of the current law, a Francoist vestige dating back to 1968. In its proposal, the executive proposed a maximum period of 50 years for the most sensitive issues, with the possibility of extensions in certain cases. This standard included, in line with European and allied standards, four categories: top secret, secret, confidential and restricted. Until now, there are only two: secret and reserved.
However, this reform was born without the support of the then minority partner of the government, Unidas Podemos, which considered the delays too long. Nor did it obtain the approval of the majority of parliamentary partners. This project was left in parliamentary limbo and was rejected when the early elections were called on July 23.
Congress is in its fifth attempt to reform the law to reduce the time it takes to declassify documents and ensure that the decision rests solely with the government and cannot be influenced by the armed forces.
“Any classification of a subject in one of its two categories will set the duration of its validity, which may not exceed twenty-five years for subjects classified as secret and ten years for those classified as reserved, unless the Council of Ministers provides for its exceptional and justified extension, in the exclusive case of secret matters, for a new maximum period of ten years”, proposes the text that the PNV has registered this legislature and that the Lower House has agreed to process.
Before this proposal, Congress had agreed to carry out four reforms, but none of them saw the light of day. The first time was in 2016, again under the Rajoy government on the proposal of the PNV, but the initiative declined with the electoral call in June of that year. The Basque nationalists presented it again in the following legislature, in November of that year, but the deadline for presenting amendments was extended until March 2018 by the majority that the PP and the PSOE then maintained in the Congress Council. After the elections of June 2019, with Pedro Sánchez in La Moncloa, the PNV registered the text again, but this time it did not reach the plenary session and it expired again with the call for new elections in November.
The last attempt was in 2020, again with a proposal from the Basque nationalists. But the PSOE’s votes in the Congress Council postponed the deadlines for amendment until the government itself presented its own draft reform of the law.
Insults to the Crown
This legislature has agreed to debate for the third time a proposal to reform the Penal Code in order to decriminalize insults to the Crown, religious feelings or state institutions. Sumar’s proposal is a text very similar to the one presented by Unidas Podemos first in 2018 and then in 2021.
In both cases, the PSOE postponed its treatment and the text ended up dying at the end of the legislature last summer. In the plenary session that debated the proposal last December, the socialists defended a “calm” debate on freedom of expression, but without losing sight of the “constitutional limits” of this right. The vote took place with 177 votes from the government partners.
The text in question proposes a reform of the Penal Code to punish crimes of opinion such as insults to the Crown, attacks on religious feelings and insults to national symbols. Another point of the law proposes to replace the crime of apology for terrorism with an aggravating circumstance to give victims greater protection, but to prevent such a crime from being used to convict artists, as happened in the cases of Pablo Hásel or the rapper Valtònyc.
This reform is one of those that Sumar has asked his government partner to include in the democratic regeneration plan, although the divergences with the PSOE on this subject are clear and in fact the decriminalization of this type of acts is not included in the government agreement that both forces have sealed for the repetition of the progressive coalition.
“Freedom of expression has limits. We need to have a debate to see where they are, where the ethics are. It seems to me that glorifying terrorism is a limit. “It’s a personal matter for me,” said socialist spokesman Patxi López on the day the reform process was debated in Congress.
All these reforms will be part of the demands that the government’s partners will put on the table in a negotiation that, like the rest of the upcoming legislature, promises to be even more complicated. The departure of Junts from the centre of influence of Catalan governance will be reflected in Congress: Carles Puigdemont’s party has already warned that it will strengthen its support for each standard. The democratic regeneration plan and the budget negotiations will be the first test of this change of attitude.
