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The Spanish government recently published a legal reform that will reduce jail time for convicted former members of ETA, the Basque separatist terror group.
Why exactly the Spanish government is reducing sentences for convicted terrorists boils down to two key issues: the first, integrating EU norms into Spanish legislation and, secondly, a mistake by the Spanish opposition Partido Popular (PP) that meant it accidentally approved the law in Congress.
The law, which you can find the official state BOE of here, centres on the exchange of criminal records and consideration of judicial decisions across the whole EU and brings Spain into line with the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS).
Essentially the Spanish reform is a modification of a previous law, passed in 2014, to adhere to a wider European directive on the communication of criminal records and sentences between member states.
READ ALSO: Wounds linger in Spain’s Basque Country a decade after ETA ended armed struggle
It was initially intended to comply with a 2008 European framework but was delayed for years in Spain. In practice, one clause means that prison time served in another member state can be taken into account within a 30-year limit (40 years in some cases) set by law.
The law will therefore reduce the sentences of some ETA prisoners, many of whom will now leave prison before their original sentences stipulated based on time served in other countries, largely in France.
The reform allows the sentences of prisoners who have served some or all of their sentences outside Spain to be validated within the Spanish legal system, which will mean that historic ETA leaders such as Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, known as Txapote, can be released early from prison.
READ ALSO: ‘Que te vote Txapote’: The divisive slogan at the heart of Spain’s election
Despite finally laying down arms in 2017, ETA prisoners have endured as a political sore for the Spanish left and the Socialist (PSOE) government headed by Prime Minister Sánchez. Sánchez’s concessions to Basque separatist parties, combined with his amnesty of Catalan separatists, have fed accusations from the Spanish right that his government is hostage to separatists and terrorists, and unrepresentative of the Spanish people.
Sánchez’s fragile majority in the Spanish Congress is dependent on the votes of both Catalan and Basque separatist parties.
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In 2019 there was widespread outrage after a Spanish court paroled tens of former ETA members, and the Sánchez government’s repeated dealings with EH Bildu, the political wing of ETA, has offended terrorism victims groups and the Spanish right.
However, the reform would not have been passed without the glaring oversight of the right-wing PP. It is a particularly painful and embarrassing error for a party that has framed much of its opposition to the Sánchez government’s on its dependence on separatist forces and its own support for terrorism victims.
Described as an “unjustifiable mistake” by party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the inclusion of the EU directive in a clause was essentially missed in the wider legislation by the PP.
“It is a hard mistake for us and for our people to digest,” Feijóo said.
In a press appearance, a spokesman assumed the “responsibility” of the PP “for not having been vigilant” in analysing the reform in detail.
After internal party investigations into the error, it appears that the deputies responsible for assessing the law focused primarily on an amendment put forward by Catalan separatist party Junts and not one presented by Sumar, which included the EU directive that would allow prison sentence reductions and it therefore basically went unnoticed.
The PP, which has a majority in the Senate, has attempted to present a complaint to the Constitutional Court, since, in its opinion, the Upper House’s rejection of the law should be considered a legal ‘veto’ and Congress should vote again on the initiative.
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The PP argues that it supported the reform by mistake, but by the time it realised it was too late and there was no possibility of amending it in and there was nothing, legally speaking, that could be done to stop it becoming law.
When the error emerged, the shock of PP senators was palpable. Many comforted their colleague Marimar Blanco, who was visibly affected.
García Gaztelu was implicated in the murder of her brother, the councillor Miguel Ángel Blanco, in San Sebastian in 1997, and he could now be released as early as 2025.
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