It proposes lower penalties and makes it a crime against the constitutional order
MADRID, 28 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Criminal Policy Study Group, an association made up of judges and magistrates such as José Ricardo de Prada or José Antonio Martín Pallín, as well as prosecutors, professors and professors, has drawn up a proposal to eliminate the crime of sedition from the Penal Code, that they brand as “obsolete” and propose to fit, although without the need for violence, in that of rebellion and with sentences from 4 to 10 years in prison, less than the current ones.
The professors of Criminal Law José Luis Díez Ripollés (University of Malaga) and Nicolás García Rivas (University of Castilla-La Mancha) have presented this Friday a proposal that, as they have assured, has generated “interest” in the Government and, specifically , in the Ministry of the Presidency, coinciding with the breakdown of negotiations between PSOE and PP for the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) due to discrepancies, precisely, regarding the reform of the crime of sedition, which applied the Supreme Court in 2019 to leaders of the ‘procés’.
This approach implies that it is no longer called sedition in the Penal Code and becomes, when diluted in the rebellion, a crime against the constitutional order, unlike the current classification, which includes it among those against public order.
For this association, sedition as it is now known has become “completely obsolete” due to its regulation, which dates back to 1995 and the end of the 19th century. In his opinion, seditious behavior today “can be punished as public disorder or attack”, with a maximum sentence of 5 years “in the event of aggravation”.
In his proposal, the substitute for sedition is a “serious attack against the democratic constitutional order” and is absorbed by rebellion as its mildest type, with penalties of 8 to 10 years if committed by an authority, 6 to 10 if there is violence or intimidation, and from 4 to 6 if it is acted by de facto means, in addition to special disqualification for employment or public office during the same time.
The penalties they suggest for this “small” rebellion are lower than those of the current Penal Code, which punishes the guilty of sedition with between 8 and 10 years, but from 10 to 15 if he is an authority.
Professor Nicolás García has assured that this approach supposes reformulating sedition in a “modern” way and “more focused on avoiding the subversion of the constitutional order”. It is “close” to rebellion but below the other two types: armed insurrection and violent or severely intimidated attacks.
García explained that those who put themselves “against the democratic authority to prevent compliance with the laws, if deep down what they want is to attack the functioning of the constitutional order” would incur in this new type of rebellion.
“A collective movement that can be violent or, at least, outside the legal channels, that confronts the authority, but it is not a crime if it does not violate the constitutional order”, the professor specified, to differentiate this new crime of, for example, who stands before the Police to stop an eviction.
Within this new type, García has assured that the events of the ‘procés’ could fit if they are interpreted as the Supreme Court did, which saw a “daydream” and not a “real separatist purpose”.
In the case of rebellion for armed insurrection, the association proposes prison terms of 20 to 30 years for its promoters, instead of the current 25 to 30, and for violent acts, from 10 to 20.
Asked if Spain should equate sedition with Europe as a whole, José Luis Díez pointed out that the problem is that “everything” of the Spanish Penal Code “has very rigorous and higher penalties for all crimes than in the vast majority of European countries “, whether robberies, thefts, injuries or falsehoods.
The professor has criticized that with the public debate on reforming only sedition, the idea is conveyed that the only thought is to reduce the punishment for crimes that affect politicians, but not for “ordinary citizens, who do not see their sentences reduced” . “Citizens do not commit rebellion or sedition, but they do robbery, aggression or falsehoods and these crimes do not go down,” he added.
Thus, he wanted to illustrate that from this association they make proposals adapting to the existing penalties and, although they are against the reviewable permanent prison, being the greatest punishment there is, they propose it for whoever causes the death of the King or his heir.
Regarding the PP’s proposal to increase the penalties for sedition, for Díez it is “wrong”, and he has reiterated that the problem is not a greater punishment but to accommodate it to “different realities”.
