The reform of the crime of sedition is a commitment by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to standardize the Spanish Penal Code with that of other democracies in surrounding countries, whose penalties for this crime are significantly lower, while at the same time revealing a tool to help dejudicialize the judicial derivatives of the procés. Next, we offer a series of keys to understand the current situation of this reform, which is still up in the air today.
The Penal Code indicates that criminals of sedition are those who, "without being included in the crime of rebellion, rise up publicly and in a mob to prevent, by force or outside the legal channels, the application of the laws or any authority, corporation official or public official, the legitimate exercise of their functions or the fulfillment of their agreements, or administrative or judicial resolutions".
The sentences range between 10 and 15 years when the crime is committed by an authority, while those who have "induced, sustained, directed the sedition or appear in it as its main authors", will be punished with between 8 and 10 years in prison. In the case of the procés, the Supreme Court imposed prison sentences of between 9 and 13 years for sedition, although a good part of the independence leaders were convicted in medial competition with the crime of embezzlement.
The reform of the crime of sedition is a commitment by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, at his inauguration in 2020, which would be aimed, on the one hand, at deflating the situation in Catalonia created in 2017 at the height of the procés and aggravated by the high sentences imposed in 2019, and, on the other, to standardize the Spanish Penal Code with that of other democracies in neighboring countries. Although this reform was discussed before, the Executive finally opted for pardons to deal with the first issue, in his opinion, more urgent and more effective.
However, with the pardons, the people who left Spain between 2017 and 2018 to avoid their probable imprisonment and trial were outside the scope of any measure of grace. This is the situation of the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont and the former ministers Toni Comín, Clara Ponsatí and Lluís Puig and the general secretary of the ERC, Marta Rovira, since the minister Meritxell Serret and the former deputy of the CUP Anna Gabriel have decided to put themselves in hands of the Spanish justice for being only prosecuted for disobedience, a crime that does not involve imprisonment.
The crime of sedition already existed in the Spanish Penal Code of 1822, with which it was intended to penalize public uprisings. Even so, in the legal system of European countries there is no directly equivalent criminal type. In surrounding states there are crimes related to resistance to authority, but in all of them the presence of violence is required.
The Italian Penal Code contains crimes of resistance, in which penalties of between six months and five years in prison are contemplated. In Germany, those convicted of resistance or public disorder are punished for three years. The same penalty applies in Switzerland for serious resistance, also in the event that an uprising is proven. Crimes against the State or the Constitution, on the other hand, are punished with one year. The highest punishment is applied in Portugal, where the Penal Code provides for sentences of between one and eight years in prison for resistance, while sentences of up to three years are included in the event of a disturbance to alter the constitutional functioning. In the French code there are sentences of two years for the crime equivalent to resistance and three if it is committed in a group. In Belgium, the penalties are between three months and two years in prison and can reach up to five if it is also perpetrated in a group.
The Government put the reform on the table already in 2020 with the Minister of Justice Juan Carlos Campo, but after the granting of the pardons it was parked. Now, practically in the last year of Sánchez's term, Esquerra wants to offer his electorate the fruits of his commitment to the dialogue table in terms of what he calls "dejudicialization of the conflict" or "anti-repressive agenda" that links to his support for the general budgets of the State. A link that bothers the Executive, which launches the idea that there is not a sufficient majority in Congress to carry out a reform of the Penal Code, which, being an organic law, must be approved by an absolute majority (176 seats). However, from ERC they deny that this necessary majority does not exist. But the key to everything is in what terms the law is reformed.
The pro-independence parties would like to eliminate the crime of sedition from the Penal Code, an extreme to which the Government flatly refuses and, after having speculated on the possibility of lowering the penalties for sedition in exchange for increases in the penalties for serious disobedience, the last The proposal reported this Monday by the newspaper El País speaks of halving the penalties for sedition.
In reality, a reduction to half of the sentences for sedition would only have a significant effect on the situation of Marta Rovira, since she is not prosecuted for embezzlement of public funds, so that she could be sentenced, if it is placed in the hands of the Supreme Court , to about six years in prison, which could end up paying off with a short prison term. However, it would hardly affect the situation of Puigdemont, Ponsatí and Puig given that as they are also prosecuted for embezzlement of public funds they could be sentenced to higher sentences for that crime.
On the other hand, there is a large number of people linked to the procés who will soon face trials for crimes that have nothing to do with sedition, so this reform would not affect them at all. In this situation are, for example, the deputies of Esquerra Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó.
