Democracy or what?

There is a proposal for a new Citizens Security Law in Spain, La Ley de Seguridad Ciudadana, which is Orwellian in its scope.

Unauthorised demonstrations will be outlawed, taking videos of police officers or insulting police officers can lead to fines. Fines can be up to 600,000€ for certain offences such as unauthorised protests at a nuclear power station. Turning up for a protest wearing a mask or anything that makes it difficult for a protestor to be identifiied can lead to a fine of 30,000€. Obstructing a public official from going about their normal duties could also cost 30,000€. There is lots more.

Now there are plenty of laws in Spain to deal with violence and public disorder but the problem may be that the courts are just a bit too woolly for our present government. The Vicepresident, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, had a bunch of people protesting outside her house about the current spate of evictions. She took 27 of them to court but, back in May, the judge threw the complaint out as he said there was no case to answer.

Anyway, whether this is a brilliant law or the most dreadful nonsense isn't my point here. I don't like it and I wanted to put in my two penn'orth. So I asked some Spaniards how you go about the equivalent of writing to my MP. Generally they didn't have a clue and most seemed to think that it was probably impossible and certainly a waste of time. It's always been a waste of time writing to your MP in the UK but at least you can.

Spain doesn't have constituency MPs in the same way as the UK. MPs or diputados are voted for on a province by province basis. Politicians are on a list, the key politicians at the top of the list. Depending on the percentage of the vote that a particular party gets they get to send so many of their list to Parliament. It's actually a bit more complicated than that but in general that's the system.

This means that it is very difficult to identify anyone who represents you at a national level.

It is possible to write to the government though. I've done it before. The Justice Ministry, The Interior Ministry etc. have websites and you can send suggestions and complaints via their websites. I remember when I tried this before it wasn't easy but I did eventually find a method to send a simple email to complain about something. I received confirmation of receipt but never any answer.

The Interior Ministry webite asked me for an electronic signature before I could start to write my complaint. I have one. It took some getting but I have one. The computer accepted my signature as some form of security certificate but then it started to warn me that the government site I was talking to was insecure and I should be very careful of it. I kept plugging away. The form would only work with Internet Explorer and the browser kept asking for this or that bit of Java which I had to install but eventually everything seemed to be working as it should until I pushed the send button. At that point the website rejected the security certificate it had already accepted. Try as I might I could find no way around.

I gave in and used a much less official looking suggestion and complaint form from a different part of the website. I filled it in and pushed the send button. Sorry this website is temporarily unavailable said the caption as the site wiped out everything I'd typed. I got the bugger away in the end but it took some doing.

Now Spain still doesn't have a Freedom of Information Act, there seem to be no simple methods for raising a concern and now they intend to stop ordinary citizens from getting out on the streets so they can shout at the politicians.

Isn't democracy a wonderful thing?