THE Txapote Reform This is not the first goal that the government has scored against the PP regarding the ETA prisoner policy. In 2021, the popular They also did not notice the legislative modification proposed by the Executive which made it possible to make access more flexible for ETA criminals convicted of the third degree. This error needed to be resolved to the extreme an amendment proposed, paradoxically, by the socialist group in the Senate.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and the 2030 Agenda led by the founder of Podemos, Pablo Iglesiasput on the table a bill that would allow convicted members of the terrorist group “to access the third year without being required, as until now, to have served half of the sentence if the judge accepts it. This is what the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT).
In June 2020, the Council of Ministers drafted a bill for the “comprehensive protection of children”. The Executive sent this initial text to the Lower House for debate and, if it examines it, to modify the articles. This document included the modification of several regulations, including the Penal Code.
Concretely, he reformed article 36 of the Penal Code which regulates minimum and maximum sentences, as well as when the third degree can be granted. The law establishes that if a criminal is sentenced to more than 5 years in prison, the third degree can only be granted after serving half the sentence, with some exceptions. In any case, the rule clearly specifies that this authorization cannot be granted to people convicted of “terrorist crimes” or “committed within a criminal organization”.
However, the bill that the government submitted to Congress in June 2020 changed this provision. The Executive’s proposal was to include people convicted of terrorism, which was not the case until then, among those who can benefit from a third degree and benefit from permits before serving half their sentence. penalty. All this on the condition that the prison supervisory judge accepts it.
The government has treated it as an emergency, which reduces the procedures the document must go through before being published in the BOE. The text thus reached the Justice Commission of the Lower House. The bill passed the amendment process and presentation to the Commission without any group proposing to eliminate the amendment which benefited ETA members.
No opposition
Subsequently, the bill was adopted in the plenary session of the Lower House. There it was approved with the support of the majority, 268 deputies: the PSOE, the PP, Unidas Podemos and its confluences, ERC, Más País, Ciudadanos and the Mixed Group. Only Vox and the PNV voted against. Vox opposed this judgment because, according to him, it was created to educate children “in the image” of what the Government represents, which, for the parliamentarian Maria Teresa Lopez Alvarez It was the “destruction of family, of life and of Spain”. Of course, in this speech he remembered “the families of these thirty children murdered by the terrorist group ETA”, but he did not notice the measure from which ETA prisoners benefited.
For its part, the PP assured from the podium of Congress that this law “made sense” and boasted of having “presented nearly 150 amendments”, none of them aimed at eliminating the provision which relaxed access of third degree terrorists. The former deputy and today spokesperson for the PP in the Senate, Alicia Garciaassured that it was a “timely and necessary law” and that it was “supported by 500,000 signatures of Spaniards”.
“Technical improvement”
Paradoxically, it was the government partner of the ministry who presented the bill who had to correct it. During the amendment procedure in the Senate, the socialist parliamentary group requested the deletion of the sixth final provision of the text, which included the measure that relaxed the third degree for convicted ETA members. It was then justified as a “technical improvement”.
This last minute correction of the PSOE, just before this standard is definitively approved in Congress in 2021, contrasts today with the inaction of the socialist executive in the face of criticism of the reform of the Socialist Party. Organic Law 7/2014THE Txapote Reform. This modification results in a reduction in sentence for ETA members who have served part of their sentence in another country of the European Union.
