The gag law is an old book in a trunk that hasn’t been opened for a long time. Eight years have passed since, under the name of the Organic Law for the Protection of Citizen Security, it was approved alone by the Popular Party, in 2015. At that time, the current president Pedro Sánchez promised to eliminate it if it reached Moncloa, saying that It was an attack on freedom of expression. But being in power, concerns about this issue have been lowered. And there it goes. An entrenched law that has not been able to give a way out or any modification.
There are laws that cannot be reformed, and the big parties know this well.
The reform, destined to fail. Today the gap has been closed. The negotiations between the Government and its partners have not finally come to fruition. There will be no reform of the gag law this legislature. One of the main legislative projects of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez, will shipwreck before even reaching the Plenary. This is all due to the fact that ERC and EH Bildu have announced that they will vote “no” to the reform that was going to be discussed in Congress, arguing that it “does not repeal the most harmful articles” and keeps the essence of the law approved by the Mariano Rajoy’s PP in 2015 to bury the street protests.
Mainly, they allege that, instead of repealing it (which is what was originally intended), the law is only being “made up”.
What are they referring to? The incipient failure had actually been created for months due to the political disputes between the six parties (PSOE, Unidas Podemos and PNV on the one hand and ERC and EH Bildu on the other) around four specific points of the text: the use of rubber balls , hot returns, fines for disobedience and disrespect for authority. Despite the fact that the Government says that the text negotiated so far already annuls the most aggressive aspects of the law, the rest of the parties are not willing to support a reform that does not touch those articles.
“It is far from the repeal commitment that the political forces assumed eight years ago. The fact of wanting to maintain the most harmful aspects of Rajoy’s gag makes it unaffordable to vote in favor of the proposal. We do not want to be accomplices of a sweetened gag law “, explained Jon Iñarritu, deputy of Bildu.
an eternal conflict. The six political parties have been working to change the law for more than a year and a half. In fact, this has been the time that it has gone the farthest to reform it. Almost a hundred meetings have been necessary to modify up to 36 of the 54 articles that the norm includes and include a dozen additional provisions. All with one goal: to move from “excessive protection” for police officers to a model that “protects citizens more.” But changing the essence of a law in Spain is very difficult.
There are irreformable laws. That’s how it is. And the big parties know this well. As much as the PP complains about the Abortion Law, or that the PSOE or Podemos cry out against the Gag Law or the Labor Reform. There are things that once you change them it is very difficult to reverse them. This is a good example. This reform was undoubtedly the most complicated of the entire legislature.
The parties started from very distant positions in key points of the norm. And what at first was going to be a repeal ended up mutating into an attempt at reform. And no matter how much the parties have managed to advance on the points on which they were most in agreement, they have not addressed the most controversial ones until the end. And this has caused the negotiations to founder. As expected, of course.