The shipwreck of the reform of the Citizen Security law that was certified yesterday in the Congress of Deputies —given the inability to reach an agreement between the six parties that promoted it— means that the norm approved by the Popular Party will be eight years old without seeing a single comma of its articles altered. The debate in recent months has focused on four aspects of what is known as the gag law in which there has been no consensus among the promoters: the use of rubber bullets as riot control material, disrespect for agents, fines for disobedience and hot returns.
However, beyond those articles that have ultimately caused the reform to fail, the truth is that the working group that had been negotiating for more than a year and a half to modify the law had managed to agree on almost fifty amendments and another good number of provisions to retouch 36 of the 54 articles that make up one of the laws that received the most social rejection during the government of the absolute majority of the Popular Party. These advances have remained a dead letter after yesterday the reform did not pass the penultimate parliamentary process in the Interior Commission.
The spokespersons for the different groups have been conveying for some time that the reform was intended to change the paradigm of a law that contemplates “excessive protection” for agents of the State Security Forces and Corps to move to a model that sought to “protect more the citizens”. In this spirit, the parties agreed that spontaneous demonstrations —which under current law are penalized as a minor infraction, from 100 to 600 euros— would not be fined. “The absence of prior communication will not prevent the exercise of the right of assembly as long as it is peaceful,” the agreed text included. Along the same lines, the intention was that demonstrations that cause “serious disturbance of citizen security” in front of the Congress of Deputies, the Senate or the autonomous assemblies would cease to be a serious infraction. Those known as Surround the Congress.
These two modifications outraged the police unions that in November 2021, after Pedro Sánchez promised for the umpteenth time that he would repeal the gag law, took to the streets en masse to demand that the reform be paralyzed. Yesterday, there was unanimity between the National Police unions and the majority Civil Guard associations: they all celebrated that the reform was knocked down. They also did not agree with the modification that was going to include that the mere recording and dissemination of images of police actions will not be punishable. It would only be a serious offense when the recordings affect the security or privacy of the agents. Actually, this point that outraged the unions refers to an article of the Popular Party law that was not endorsed by the Constitutional Court.
Another amendment that the police unions did not like at all was the elimination of the absolute criterion of veracity of the agents. In its place, the requirement of “logic, coherence and reasonableness” was included in the declarations and certificates. This modification was negotiated in the months in which the former deputy of Unidas Podemos Alberto Rodríguez was sentenced by the Supreme Court for kicking a police officer during a protest in 2014.
Among the 36 articles retouched in the report that was laid down in Congress yesterday, significant reductions in the amount of the sanctions were also included as a novelty, which would be related to the income of the sanctioned party. For example, it was intended that for those who earn up to 1.5 times the minimum interprofessional salary, the reduction of the fine would reach 50%. It was also sought that the times for police identifications decrease, from a maximum of six hours to two. All this has remained a dead letter for this legislature, in which the legislative calendar is going to prevent, in all probability, the registration of any other initiative to try to reverse some aspect of the law.
