Spain
Court decision refutes Franco’s press lawPosted Oct 5 2011
The World Press Freedom Committee of Freedom House is condemning a 1966 Spanish press law that was used in a recent court ruling.
The Committee said it is “one of the most backward and repressive laws in Spanish legislation.” Despite the law being nearly 45 years old, it is still ruling. However, in a recent case where a plaintiff invoked the law, a Madrid court decided to not use it and drop the charges against a Spanish literary magazine.
Plaintiff Juan Cotarelo García was suing the publishing arm of Leer magazine for defamation. In 2006, Leer/Documentos published the historical book that mentioned an affair between a corrupted chief of police and the plaintiff’s mother.
Garcia filed the lawsuit more than 30 years after the book’s first publication in 1981. The book, The 1956 Generation: College Students Against Franco , was written by Pablo Lizcano, who died in 2002.
Originally, the 1966 press law was enacted to eliminate censorship and liberate the press. Conversely, it constrained newspapers to implement self-censorship because the state retained “the right to punish publishers for what it considered violations of ill-defined norms, whose interpretation was solely at its own discretion,” a study about the media and politics in Spain reports.
Garcia demanded sanctions against the author’s widow, Rosa Montero, and against the publishing house, but Judge Fontán Silva rejected the lawsuit because the statute of limitations had expired, according to the IFEX article.
World Press Freedom Committee of Freedom House asked the Spanish government to repeal the 1966 law, along with another from 1982; the organization said the two laws contribute to undermining freedom of the press in Spain.