ACCYDED - Citizens Association Against Corruption and for the Defense of the Rule of Law

Legal Security

stench

Walk into a bakery and the smell promises something delicious; into a library, and we know we will learn; into a hospital, and we trust they will heal us. And when we enter a Spanish court? Legal certainty —the assurance that courts will respect the Constitution and apply the law— should be that promise. Too often it is not.

The constitutional promise

Article 9.3 of the Spanish Constitution guarantees legal certainty alongside the principle of legality, the hierarchy of legal norms, the publication of laws, the accountability of public authorities and the prohibition of arbitrary action by them. Article 24, in turn, recognises the right to effective judicial protection without being left defenceless, and to proceedings with full safeguards. On paper, anyone who goes to court knows where they stand: known rules, impartial judges and reasoned, predictable decisions.

The experience of those who litigate against entrenched power paints a different picture. What follows are not textbook hypotheticals but situations our association has lived through or documented, and which it publicly denounces.

When procedural safeguards stay on paper

  • Being questioned without first being informed of the accusation, in open contradiction of the right of defence.
  • Being unable to obtain the recording of a hearing in time to prepare an appeal within the deadline.
  • Having the proposed witness evidence —essential to prove the facts reported— refused, only for the case to be closed for "lack of evidence".
  • Receiving an expert report assigned by lot to a 73-year-old expert, no longer active in the profession, whose independence and technical competence raise serious doubts.
  • Being denied access to documents requested in preliminary proceedings, making it impossible to prove any wrongdoing.

Add to this the structural guarantees —random allocation of cases, respect for time limits, the independence of judges and prosecutors— that all too often look like mere ideals. It is the portrait of a constitution that is more semantic than normative: one that is proclaimed but not obeyed.

Laws breached without consequence

Even more serious than procedural violations is the breach of essential rules in specific matters we have brought before the authorities:

  • Whistleblower protection: people have been deprived of their liberty after reporting alleged corruption in the courts themselves, despite Law 2/2023.
  • Data protection: protected documents have been leaked to support criminal complaints worth 500,000 euros, as if the end justified the means.
  • Transparency: documents that could expose alleged networks of misappropriation are withheld.
  • Property owners' associations: invoices are held back to prevent taxpayers from deducting the VAT on their expenses.
  • Urban planning: 92 subsidised homes are built where the maximum occupancy allowed only 75.
  • VAT: the Tax Agency itself applies exemptions we consider to lack any legal basis, an issue we are still pursuing in the courts.
  • Corporate tax: the courts have yet to recognise that a non-profit entity cannot generate profits.

If, on top of these breaches, there is reason to suspect they stem not from carelessness but from premeditation, the scandal would deserve front-page headlines. Probably in another country's press.

The root of the problem: privilege and indulgence

To understand how we got here we must go back to 1985. Since then, all three branches —legislative, executive and judicial— have maintained and extended a regime of aforamientos that removes thousands of office-holders from the ordinary courts and places them before special tribunals. Almost four decades of exception have set Spain apart from the democratic Europe around it and given free rein to many of the breaches of the law we suffer.

The European Commission continues to voice concern about this system in its Rule of Law Reports, while citizens' attempts to hold judges and prosecutors to account —the only ones empowered to oversee everyone else— have so far come to nothing. The diagnosis fits into two words: divinity, that of those who know they are beyond all scrutiny, and indulgence, that of the institutions that tolerate it.

Legal certainty is no luxury for lawyers: it is the difference between living under the rule of law and living at the whim of whoever applies it.

What we demand

Restoring trust in justice requires concrete, verifiable measures:

  1. Immediate access for the parties to recordings and case files, with no obstacles that jeopardise appeal deadlines.
  2. Auditable allocation of cases and appointment of experts with genuine guarantees of independence and expertise.
  3. Investigation, of the authorities' own motion and in full transparency, of corruption complaints affecting the justice system itself.
  4. The abolition of aforamientos and full equality of all before the law.

Without oversight there is no legal certainty, and without legal certainty there is no rule of law. We invite you to stay informed, to report what you see and to join those of us demanding that our courts smell of justice once again.

Further reading