Marimar Blanco charges against the Government for "benefit" to ETA members like ‘Txapote’, whose sentence will not be reduced by the reform

This Monday in the Senate, PP senator Marimar Blanco defended her group’s vote against the reform of the law that will allow Spanish prisoners to accumulate sentences served in other EU countries. The PP voted in favor in Congress and did not present any partial or total amendment to the text in the Senate, but has attacked the Government once the deadline for modifying the norm has passed.

Blanco, sister of the Ermua councilor murdered by ETA in 1997, Miguel Ángel Blanco, has taken the floor to charge against the Government and has expressly cited the name of the terrorist who murdered her brother, Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, ‘Txapote’.

“What dignity do you defend? None, except that of ETA prisoners. Like ‘Txapote’, a name that simply mentioning it disgusts me from the depths of my gut. They don’t know to what extent. But Sánchez does not have the slightest problem of benefiting to continue paying the high price of renting the Moncloa,” he said.

But ‘Txapote’ will not benefit from the legal reform because the National Court already accumulated in 2014 the sentences he had served in France, which will mean that the ETA terrorist will remain in prison until the beginning of 2031. Something that the PP has gone through also high in this Monday’s debate. He was arrested in France in 2001 and sentenced in 2002 to 10 years in prison. He was handed over to Spain definitively in December 2007 so that he could finish serving his sentence and face the pending trials in our country.

The ETA member has accumulated hundreds of years in prison in sentences for the murders of Miguel Ángel Blanco, Gregorio Ordóñez and Fernando Múgica, among others, although Spanish law establishes that the maximum sentence that a prisoner can serve is 30 years. ‘Txapote’ requested on several occasions the accumulation of sentences imposed against him, including that of France. The National Court agreed by means of an order on December 5, 2014, to which elDiario.es had access.

The judges state in that order that ‘Txapote’ was sentenced in 2002 to a 10-year prison sentence in the neighboring country, which he had to finish serving on February 23, 2011, and they point out that prior to 2014, several sentences had already been accumulated against him. sentences of the Spanish justice system. Furthermore, the judges emphasize that ‘Txapote’ has a maximum sentence of 30 years, as established by Spanish legislation, because the ETA member was sentenced before the reform that extended that term to 40 years. In Spain, legal changes can never be used retroactively to the detriment of prisoners.

It was precisely in 2014 when this law was implemented for the first time. So, it was the Government of Mariano Rajoy that promoted it, and initially no exceptions were established for ETA prisoners. The reports from the Council of State and the CGPJ did not warn of any problems, but at the end of the process the PP amended the rule to add an exceptionality that, subsequently, the European and Spanish courts have overturned.