Nine years ago, pending the adoption of the Mordaza Law, the Council of Europe itself said that the law was going to be “disproportionate” and its “great concern”. “This law is a reactionary and conservative absurdity to criminalize street protest and criticism,” said Joan Queralt, professor of criminal law in Barcelona. Representatives of the associations Judge of Democracy and Progressive Lawyers pointed out that the law is “useless, repressive and inadequate”. Unfortunately, the latest disproportionate sanctions against the youth organisations GKS, Jarki and Ernai show us that all these forecasts have been met.

According to the balance of the ELEAK-Libre movement on the first year of application of this Law of Citizen Security in the Basque Country, based on official data provided by the Basque and Navarro governments and published by the Basque magazine ARGIA, the law was applied on 3,052 occasions. In 2016, an average of 33 weekly sanctions were imposed in the Autonomous Community of Navarra. Regarding the territorial scope of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, the sanctions imposed by the Ertzaintza between July 2015 and December 2016 were 8,087 in total, an average of 88 weeks. That is, the first year of validity, each week, more than 110 times the Law of Citizen Security in Hego Euskal Herria was applied... And since then, things have only made a mistake.

In 2016, both the Parliaments of Navarre and the CAV stood against the Mordaza Law, and the Basque Parliament in June 2016 urged the Basque Government not to apply the Mordaza Law. In the last nine years, however, there has been no more than a strengthening of the implementation of the Mordaza Act.

In 2018, seeing that both governments had no intention to comply with these decisions, most of the social, trade union and political actors in Euskal Herria requested the repeal of the Mordaza Law. Among other things, they joined the request of the ELEAK - Libre movement, Ongi Etorri Refugees, Komite Internazionalistak, Euskal Herriko Bilgune Feminista, Bake Ekintza Talde Antimilitaristak, Ernai Gazte Mugiak, Askapena, NOR Raikal Heratig Koruskeusak. Among the unions, ELA, LAB, ESK and STEE EILAS joined and among the political forces, Sortu, Equo and EH Bildu. Finally, among the public media, ARGIA, Hala Bedi and Topatu. In short, the majority of Basque society requested the repeal of the Mordaza Act. No case.

In 2019, the ELEAK-Libre movement made clear in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights what happened: “The Organic Law 4/2015, on Citizen Protection, Mordaza Law, has clearly accentuated police abuses and violations of the fundamental rights of assembly, demonstration, organization and freedom of the press, increasing the repression against political criticism and social mobilization. This Law implies the disappearance of the existing procedural safeguards in any sanction proceeding, undermining the principle of legal certainty, legality, defence and presumption of innocence, as well as the equality of the parties/processes and the principle of proportionality. All this legislation encourages the criminalization and repression of social, trade union and political movements, so we have called on the United Nations to urge the Spanish State to repeal it immediately.”

In 2021, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande Marlaska, in an interview given to the newspaper The New York Times, stated that the Government of Pedro Sánchez had the will to revise the Mordaza Law. Since then, more than 50 meetings have been held between the political forces present at the Madrid Congress, but today the Mordaza Law is still in force and the political massacre generated by its implementation.

In the Northern Basque Country there is no Mordaza Law, but the French Government has also taken its cutting steps to end the social protest. Proof of this are the proliferation of police files and the reinforcement of controls, or the militants who have been condemned for the defence of the land, the fight against speculation or the participation in actions for the Basque people. In other words, Euskal Herria has become a Moorish territory.

And where is our answer the same size? It doesn't exist. All those of us who believe that civil disobedience, lack of collaboration, input, popular resistance or direct action are not crimes, must unite, put them into practice and strengthen them by organizing social boxes of resistance to the attacks we are suffering. If we do not change the rules of the game, ours has done so, we will be ruined by all rights.

We must turn repression into an instrument that strengthens our freedom project. The more attacks on us, the more mobilizing responses we must respond. In that we have to be stronger, tireless, enduring, fearful. We must develop strategies of civil resistance and disobedience. It is the turn of civil resistance, the rebellion of the national and social construction. The Basque political actors involved in institutional dynamics will not do so. It's time for popular movement.

Joseba Alvarez, member of the Left Abertzale