The proposal to reform the gag law brings back the ghosts of the last legislature

The gag law has been in force for nine years now. The law, which the PP enacted under the name of the Citizen Security Law, sought to reduce protests during the hardest years of cuts due to the economic crisis. On the way to completing a decade if it is not repealed before then, the law has survived with a paradox: it has been in force longer under a parliamentary majority that promised to repeal it, than it was with the Executive that approved it.

On Tuesday, the second vice-president and Minister of Labour, Yolanda Díaz, announced an agreement with the PSOE to definitively repeal the gag law. Ending the law is part of the proposals that Sumar asked to be incorporated into the regeneration plan that Pedro Sánchez presented on Wednesday in Congress. The President of the Government dedicated a sentence of his speech to this matter: “Let’s see if we can achieve it in this mandate, with regard to freedom of expression.”

Although brief, the sentence sets limits for the reform that ERC and EH Bildu do not share. The Republicans expressed their rejection of the proposal, as insufficient, during the plenary session. And EH Bildu, although they did not refer to it during the debate, already voted against the previous proposal, considering that it should be more ambitious. And this one also does not include the claims that motivated its rejection.

Sumar spokesman Iñigo Errejón called during the session to “move towards the complete dismantling of the framework of repressive laws”, in which his party includes, in addition to modifying the gag law, a change in the Penal Code to suppress the crime against religious feelings, insults to the Government and crimes against the crown. “We must end the laws of fear, people are less powerful when they are afraid,” he said.

The agreement that Sumar conveyed to the media only includes the modification of one point of the gag law, the one referring to the dissemination of police images. Although Errejón stressed that the intention is to “move towards the complete dismantling of the framework of repressive laws,” the agreement for now has less scope than the one that was frustrated in the previous legislature.

The ERC spokesman was very critical during his speech. Gabriel Rufián, after Errejón boasted that the “meat” of the regeneration plan had been provided by Sumar, asked him: “Meat is putting an end to rubber bullets? Is it a matter of putting an end to hot returns? It is not a matter of meat, it is something else.”

Aitor Esteban, spokesman for the PNV, did not mention the reform proposal during his speech, but he had already spoken about it the president of the PNV, Andoni OrtuzarSpeaking to the media on Tuesday, he said that his party was in favour of this change in the gag law, as it had been during the previous legislative period: “If the content goes in the direction we were saying, it will be welcomed.”

Ortuzar, however, is aware of why he ran aground more than a year ago: he said that ERC and EH Bildu “insisted on adding new content to the law”, referring to the hot returns and the ban on rubber bullets, and he hoped that the Government had communicated its new proposal to these two parties. Rufián said on Wednesday that they did not know anything: “We will see it with interest, although it would be good to call us and inform us before certain announcements.”

A frustrated commitment

The agreement between PSOE and Sumar means complying with what was already agreed upon in view of the investiture: “We will reform and repeal those aspects of the current regulations that limit the rights of assembly and freedom of expression (the “gag law” and the Penal Code),” stated the document signed on October 24, 2023.

That pact included several commitments that had not been able to be carried out during the previous legislature, but without a doubt the clearest is the repeal of the gag law. The text signed in 2019 between PSOE and Unidas Podemos for the first coalition government of democracy already included the approval of “a new Law on citizen security, which replaces the ‘Gag Law’ to guarantee the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly”. It was, in addition, a recurring promise of Pedro Sánchez, which he insisted on after coming to power in 2018: “We are going to advance in rights by repealing the gag law, because no truly free society pursues freedom of expression”.

Six years have passed since the parliamentary majority was opposed to the law and there have been numerous attempts to end it, all of them unsuccessful. The closest attempt – after years of complicated parliamentary procedures with parallel initiatives in Congress – failed in March 2023.

That month, a Committee on the Interior was held in Congress, which was to give the final approval to the reform before it was passed to the Plenary and finally approved. But the bloc that had promoted the repeal maintained a series of differences regarding its scope that they were unable to resolve, and which are still alive.

Esquerra Republicana and EH Bildu voted against the text, considering that it does not “repeal the most damaging articles” and keeps “intact” the spirit of the law approved by the Rajoy Government. Both parties demanded that rubber bullets and hot returns be prohibited, in addition to arguing that the text agreed between PSOE, Unidas Podemos and PNV did not eliminate “the most damaging aspects” of the law.

The Socialists criticised the position of ERC and Bildu for allowing “the PP rule to remain in force” and from Unidas Podemos, Enrique Santiago said that “no democrat”, “no one on the left” could understand that an agreement had not been reached. Reforming the Gag Law requires Junts to be included in the pact and the proposal is, for now, less ambitious than the one that was rejected.