By Martin Delfín Memo From Madrid
Privacy laws are very strict in Spain . If I were to take my video camera and, let’s say, tape a police officer frisking a suspect for drugs or even maybe recording one person at a demonstration for no other purpose but to harass them or for my own gain, I could perhaps find myself in court facing if not a criminal but a civil suit. So it came with great astonishment last week that there is one judge in Madrid who believes that surveillance of individuals, for no other reason but to keep tabs on what they are doing, isn’t a crime.
That’s what Judge Carmen Valcarce ruled on Thursday when she ordered a temporary stay in the proceedings of an investigation into months-long allegations of political spying by members of the Popular Party-controlled regional government in Madrid. The judge shelved the inquiry on grounds that it couldn’t be determined how much public money, if any, had been used to spy on public officials.
The spook case first broke last year when El País reported that aides to Esperanza Aguirre, the PP regional government chief, ordered security agents in 2008 to tail Madrid Deputy Mayor Manuel Cobo and former deputy regional premier Alfredo Prada. The two officials were seen as part of Aguirre’s rival camp as she was trying to wrest control of the PP following the general elections in which the opposition lost. A bitter internal battle, which continues today, ensued between her and Madrid Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, with both Cobo and Prada joining the ranks of Gallardón supporters.
Following the filing of civil lawsuits by Cobo and Prada, investigative Judge Valcarce opened an inquiry in which she took testimony from about a dozen witnesses and ordered a tracking of cellphones used by security agents to determine what their positions were at the time when the two officials were tailed. The lawsuits alleged that then-Madrid security director Sergio Gamón set up a surveillance team of former Civil Guard officers to keep tabs on their meetings and day-to-day activities.
Judge Valcarce acknowledged that both officials had been hounded but explained that “the fact that a person is followed does not constitute a criminal offence, unless the information obtained by this method is used for purposes to perpetuate a crime: coerce, blackmail, threaten, kidnap, etc.” Oddly, if the Madrid government’s henchmen were sent out on 24-hour watches, I tend to think that the information gathered would have certainly been used to “coerce” or “threaten” Cobo or Prada.
Gamón, a former bodyguard to Aguirre, when she served in Congress and as Cultural minister, resigned on June 23rd after his former wife, Yolanda Laviana, told El País that her ex-husband was indeed tailing politicians on orders by Aguirre’s current deputy premier and Prada’s successor, Ignacio González. Laviana was fired from her job as executive secretary to the president of Telemadrid, the regional television network, just hours before Gamón handed in his resignation. Judge Valcalce never called her in to testify and hastily shelved her sloppy investigation as the pressure to call in Laviana was getting too tight for comfort.
So now the PP is saying that the entire espionage episode was the product of an El Pais reporter’s imagination who, by the way, had been subpoenaed to testify. It seems that this sordid episode of city politics only goes to support the premise that if you don’t play by Esperanza Aguirre’s rules you will get burned.
Sex ads ban
The prime minister believes he has the right strategy to combat people trafficking in Spain. Sr Zapatero announced on Thursday that he wants Spanish newspapers to help him in this fight by no longer publishing classified advertisements that offer sexual services. Immediately, the Spanish Daily Newspaper Publishers Association (AEDE) rejected the idea because, it says, “whatever type of advertising restriction” placed by the government “violates the fundamental rights recognized by the Constitution that refer to freedom of expression and the right to information.”
The government is trying to work around that, as well as trying to avoid a head-on collision with current legislation on prostitution, which for the most part is considered legal in this country. Zapatero said that the Equality Ministry will hammer out a formula that prohibits advertisements offering sexual services in the country’s leading newspapers while at the same time “makes the public more aware that they should not be complicit in this activity.”
People-trafficking for sexual activities is a serious matter, not only in Spain but throughout the rest of the continent. However, curtailing advertisements in the newspapers is not going to help solve the problem. The real scoop is that persons who want to find sexual pleasure mostly turn to the internet. There are dozens of websites in Spain that are dedicated to offering these paid services by both female and male prostitutes. Plus, there are even more night clubs, bars, saunas, brothels and restaurants where you can go to find a prostitute in the capital alone. Restricting newspaper ads isn’t even a start to battling human traffickers.
Martin Delfin writes for the English language version of El Pais
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