Spain

Under the Law on Public Security, declining to identify oneself to the authorities, failing to obey orders to disperse, and disseminating unauthorized images of law enforcement personnel can carry penalties of up to €30,000.

The draft Law on Public Security would limit when and where protests may take place, and impose steep fines on those who hold spontaneous protests.

Mayte Carrasco describes insults and threats after speaking about fundamentalists.

Riseup, a tech collective that provides security-minded communications to activists worldwide, sounded the alarm last month when a judge in Spain stated that the use of their email service is a practice, he believes, associated with terrorism.

The Spanish Congress should amend a deeply flawed public security bill that would curb spontaneous protest and formalize abusive expulsions of asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said today.

A joint submission to the UN during Spain’s country review emphasises concerns in three areas: defamation, regulation of the audiovisual sector and access to information.

A shady law firm in Spain called Ares Rights has been sending Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices on behalf of several Ecuadorian state officials, targeting documentaries, tweets, and search results.

Following a mass protest on 22 March, Madrid’s city council has formally asked the central government to keep protests away from “artistic-historic settings, areas of high tourist concentration, and critical transportation axes” in Madrid.

Radio Television Valenciana was shut down on 5 November by the president of the autonomous region of Valencia. The mainly Catalan-speaking channel had been considered a key factor for keeping a language spoken by 12 million Europeans culturally active.

A proposed “Law on Criminal Proceedings” would grant presiding judges the discretion – or consider requests by prosecutors – to order media outlets, under the threat of criminal liability, to cease reporting on legal procedures.

The international economic crisis led to widespread demonstrations that changed the face of citizen protest in Spain. But now there is a move to criminalise one of the most powerful movements in recent years.

The international economic crisis led to widespread demonstrations that changed the face of citizen protest in Spain. But now there is a move to criminalise one of the most powerful movements in recent years.

The Court of Justice of the European Union will consider a request from Spain’s National Court for an interpretation of European law on online data protection, following a Spanish citizen’s complaint against Google.

Putting questions to the government in Spain can be pricey, as Access Info Europe, an NGO that campaigns on transparency, has recently discovered. Today the Spanish Supreme Court ordered the NGO to pay €3,000 in legal costs for requesting information about the country’s anti-corruption measures.

Hamid Naïmi, a Moroccan journalist and opposition activist based in a Spanish enclave, is the target of death threats of presumed Moroccan origin.

Several journalists with a reputation for being critical of the ruling Popular Party (PP) in Spain have been relieved of their duties at the state-owned broadcaster RTVE.