Government partners question the new official secrets law

A few hours after the Council of Ministers gives its first approval to the draft of the new law on official secrets, which contemplates periods of up to 50 years to declassify certain reserved information, the parliamentary allies of the Government and the opposition have shown their discrepancies on the text.

United We Can, the minority partner of the coalition Executive, has also expressed its reluctance.

The PNV, which has demanded in recent years the reform of the Official Secrets Law, from the Franco period, has criticized the lack of dialogue and information from the Executive and has been disappointed by the deadlines for declassifying information.

Bildu has requested a rectification of the proposal because "it does not comply with the word given by the Government" and, if approved, it will leave "flagrant cases" of rights violations unclarified, such as the dirty war against ETA perpetrated by the GAL.

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The top secrets will remain hidden for 50 years, extendable according to the new law

The general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, assures that there has been "no contact" between La Moncloa and the popular ones and has asked President Sánchez to agree with his formation.

The Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, has launched an "appeal to all groups so that this law has a vocation for the future".

The preliminary draft law on classified information, which replaces the current Law on Official Secrets, approved in 1968, will establish for the first time the temporary expiration of State secrets, which until now had an indefinite nature.

According to government sources, these top secrets will remain hidden from public opinion for 50 years, although the government may extend them for another decade.

The norm also establishes a channel for judges to request the declassification of a document or establishes that the National Security Authority (ASN), an organization that oversees the protection of classified information, now depends on the Ministry of the Presidency.

Until now it was the responsibility of the Ministry of Defense.

Although a simple majority in Congress is enough to change the Law on Official Secrets, the Government intends to seek the greatest possible support for the reform in its parliamentary process, including that of the PP.

"We have not even had an 'Ok, see you' to address issues as important as all of this," Gamarra complained in an interview with Europa Press.

"The proposals and state policies must be agreed between the two major parties, which are those who are called to govern Spain," he added.

Vox has accused Sánchez of covering up his maneuvers against the State with his new norm, according to statements made to Efe by the national secretary of Vox, Javier Ortega Smith.

The Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, whose Ministry leaves the control of classified information with this regulation in the hands of the Presidency, has described it as “absolutely essential”.

However, she has recognized during an interview in La Sexta that "there may be improvements", and has summoned, in the face of criticism from parliamentary groups, the parliamentary process.

The ministers of United We Can, the minority partner of the coalition government, have not spoken out publicly against it, but the representatives of their parliamentary group have.

“Hide secrets from citizens for 50 years or more is to treat them as minors.

It is not characteristic of mature democracies to be afraid to know”, said the president of the parliamentary group of United We Can, Jaume Asens, through Twitter.

Pablo Echenique has influenced through this same social network that the initiative belongs to the PSOE.

Sources close to the second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, argue that "50 years is not an acceptable period to lift the secret from official secrets."

And they add: “In other countries around us, the term is 20 or 30 years.

We do not understand why they set that deadline and we do not want to think badly.

We have a sufficiently mature democracy to set that maximum term of 30 years.

We have transferred to the socialist part of the Government that we do not agree, although we have decided to agree on this discrepancy since it is a first reading of the draft Law. There will be a second round where we will try to include our proposals.

Although the ministries involved are not ours, in far-reaching laws you have to negotiate with the second vice president, which they did and understood our discrepancy.

Íñigo Errejón, deputy for Más País, has also shown his discomfort: “A democracy is all the stronger the more transparency it can assume.

The government's official secrets bill is disappointing and continues to treat Spaniards as minors."

In this sense, sources from said party have insisted that, “in a democracy, even blind spots must be subject to control”: “We do not believe that more than 10 years should pass to make reserved information public, and we do not over 25 years for secret information.

If someone considers that revealing what happened more than two and a half decades ago puts democracy at risk, they have a very poor view of the maturity of our citizens.

With the law proposed by the PSOE,

citizens who are now between 30 and 40 years old may never know the information that is now being hidden from them.

We do not believe that the Government's proposal is the way forward, and there is a majority to make a much better law”.

The PNV spokesman, Aitor Esteban, recalled that six years have passed since his formation first proposed to reform the Official Secrets Law.

The Basque nationalists consider that the draft comes "too late" and doubt that it can enter into force in this legislature.

In addition, they consider the expected deadlines "excessively long" and "disappointing".

The training, which claims not to have accessed the content of the draft, has encouraged to accelerate the deadlines to advance in "one of the structural reforms that the Spanish State is still pending".

EH Bildu has directly requested the rectification.

"It is not acceptable that the reform proposed by the Government does not touch the main elements of a Francoist law, which will keep secret everything that attacked the rights and freedoms of thousands of Basques," he said in a statement.

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has stressed that, if approved, "flagrant cases of rights violations" that occurred in the Basque Country, such as the GAL, "the systematic practice of torture" or events such as those of March 3, 1976 in Vitoria-Gasteiz or the Sanfermines of 1978. "This decision would perpetuate impunity for these events, denying the truth, justice and reparation that all victims deserve", he added.