Sedition disappears and the maximum penalty for public disorder will be 5 years

The proposal of the PSOE and United We Can presented this morning in the Congress of Deputies proposes the abolition of the crime of sedition to replace it with one of aggravated public disorder.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
11 November 2022 Friday 02:32
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Sedition disappears and the maximum penalty for public disorder will be 5 years

The proposal of the PSOE and United We Can presented this morning in the Congress of Deputies proposes the abolition of the crime of sedition to replace it with one of aggravated public disorder. What the text does is, according to the explanatory statement, approach the criminal codes of the Spanish environment. The sentences now go to a maximum of five years with a disqualification that could reach eight years.

Once this text is finally approved, the Prosecutor's Office will have to analyze it to study how the disqualification will be for already convicted pro-independence leaders, as is the case of the former Vice President of the Generalitat Oriol Junqueras and eight others, as well as how it will affect those who They are still pending trial, such as the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont or the general secretary of the ERC, Marta Rovira.

Ultimately, it will be the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court that sets new sentences for those already tried. The first thing that must be assessed is whether the sentence of sedition can be replaced by the new sentence of aggravated public disorder. And then make a new calculation but only for disqualification because they were already pardoned by the Government for the prison sentence.

On the one hand, the penalties for this crime will have to be recalculated. In this case, it will be necessary to see how the sentences remain for the former presidents of the sovereigntist entities ANC and Òmnium Cultural, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart, as well as the former president of Parliament Carme Forcadell, who were not convicted of embezzlement.

Something more complex will be for the rest because the sedition was in competition with another crime, that of embezzlement of public funds. Once the reform is approved, it will be necessary to study how the disqualification remains, taking into account that the economic crime carries penalties of disqualification of between 10 and 20 years in its aggravated aspect.

The text presented establishes sentences of between six months and three years for those who, acting in a group, threaten public peace, carry out acts of violence and intimidation.

The penalty reaches up to five years in prison and disqualification from employment or public office for the same time when they are committed by a crowd whose number, organization and purpose are suitable to seriously affect public order. If the perpetrators are found to be in authority, "the penalty of disqualification will be absolute for a period of six to eight years."

In addition, in a part of the text it states that the provocation, the conspiracy and the proposition of these behaviors will be punished with penalties lower than one or two degrees of those provided.

In the statement of reasons, the two parties maintain that this modification aspires to the approval of the regulations of other countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium or Portugal.

As explained, this new regulation provides more precision to the criminal type and thus be able to differentiate it more clearly from the crime of rebellion.

With the new modality of aggravated public disorder, what is required is that the crime be committed by a crowd whose characteristics (number, organization and purpose) "are suitable to seriously affect public order, understood as the normal functioning of institutions and services public”.

Likewise, it states that it is configured as a type of danger that, "although it does not require that public order be effectively affected or prevented, it does require that the elements have been arranged in an appropriate way to have endangered it."

On the other hand, in the exhibition it is reflected that in this new article a "more precise systematization of the aggravating factors of the crime of public disorder is carried out and the figure that sanctions the commission of some of the behaviors associated with this crime is maintained without mediation. violence or intimidation”.

This is the full text of the reform of the Penal Code to eliminate the crime of sedition proposed by United We Can and PSOE in their bill: