Protesters, during the march held on March 29, 2023 in Carabanchel.
In Madrid there is so much freedom that a resident of the Carabanchel neighborhood has been fined 601 euros by a local police officer for using a megaphone during an authorized demonstration.
Pedro Casas, 71, is a retired neighborhood sociologist.
Casas has been president of the Carabanchel Alto Neighborhood Association for a year.
Casas says by phone that on March 29, 2023, a demonstration was called on Avenida de los Poblados in the neighborhood to demand the creation of a center for the memory of the Carabanchel prison.
Demolished in 2008, it was one of the places where Franco's repression was most exerted.
An association has since demanded that a place be built to house what was done there and who passed through there.
And that March afternoon they went out, again, to claim it.
The march was requested from the Government Delegation - a necessary procedure for any demonstration that must take place at least 15 days - and approved, as stated in a document to which this newspaper has had access.
“The demonstration,” says the text, “will start from the pedestrian zone of the Aluche Interchange – Avenida de los Poblados – intersection with the access entrance to the CIE/Police Station, where the march will conclude and a statement will be read.”
Casas previously went to the headquarters of the neighborhood group, where they keep the typical classic megaphone that always appears at any demonstration.
He grabbed it and took it to the march, where, he says, around 150 neighbors attended.
The protest, he says, began around 6:30 p.m. and ended after 7:45 p.m.
In the text they sent to the Government Delegation the following was stated: “Demand that the building that is now used as the Aluche Foreigner Internment Center (CIE), former Penitentiary Hospital of the old Carabanchel prison, cancel its use as CIE and be used as the Memory Center of said old prison.
The estimated participation is 250 people.”
With the yes to the march, several local police officers went to Avenida de los Poblados to regulate traffic.
Casas says that, when he took out the megaphone and just at the beginning of the protest, the officer immediately approached him:
"Hello, do you have authorization?"
―No, it is not necessary to use a megaphone.
—You have to notify us because of the noise ordinance.
—I have the right because this is a communicated demonstration.
And the agent, according to Casas, issued a warning:
-Face the consequences.
This cannot be used.
—I have the right and I am going to use it.
And he used it.
Casas says he did not make any unusual chants during those 90 minutes of protest.
That he didn't play music or insult anyone.
“Carabanchel Memory Center!” He shouted, while pronouncing the typical slogans of the protest: “Truth, justice and reparation!”
He says that was the only thing he said.
“I didn't dedicate myself to singing.
I encouraged people.”
At the end of the march, the agent who spoke with him at the beginning approached him again and fined him.
A spokesperson for the Madrid City Council explains by phone that Casas was indeed fined for using the megaphone without authorization.
“According to the record,” he says, “he is reported by the Noise and Thermal Pollution Ordinance and by the Organic Law on Citizen Protection for disobedience to agents of authority, since he had been previously warned and ignored.
He was using it throughout the entire tour for one hour and forty-five minutes.”
Last year's demonstration, in an image provided by the Carabanchel Alto Neighborhood Association.
The sanctioning file began eight months after that protest.
The letter that appeared in neighbor Casas' mailbox says that the fine is covered by article 36.6 of the Organic Law for the Protection of Citizen Security, known as the
gag law
, which was approved by the PP Government in 2015. “Disobedience or resistance to authority or its agents in the exercise of their functions," says the article on which the Madrid Local Police is based, "as well as the refusal to identify oneself at the request of the authority or its agents or the allegation of false or inaccurate data in the identification processes.”
Based on this article, questioned by many parliamentary groups in the Congress of Deputies, the Government collected 405 million euros during the pandemic, as published by the Europa Press agency and recorded in the Statistical Yearbook of the Ministry of the Interior for 2021.
The penalty applied to Casas is 601 euros, but the law says that, depending on each case, the range can be extended to 30,000 euros.
The file is still open because the neighbor has appealed the fine.
This Thursday, at 5:30 p.m., the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid has called a rally in front of the Latina Municipal Board, coinciding with the holding of a plenary session in which a neighborhood spokesperson will intervene to talk about this case.
“This is an abuse of power by the police officer on duty,” says the president of all the neighborhood associations in Madrid, Enrique Villalobos, by phone.
“This is freedom of expression and you cannot prevent the use of a megaphone in a march.
The City Council should take action on the matter.”
During the nine years that he has been president, Villalobos only remembers one similar case.
It happened in the Vicálvaro district and was finally archived.
Villalobos now has no doubts either: “This thing about neighbor Casas is an act of freedom of expression.”
Subscribe here
to our daily newsletter about Madrid
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_