The lack of access to information is the single greatest barrier to a press aspiring to be the eyes and ears of the Spanish citizenry. Currently, public officials are under no legal obligation to open their books, reports or statistics to inspection, and requests for them to do so, whether from citizens or journalists, are routinely denied or ignored. Reports prepared with public funds on everything from nursery inspections to crime statistics are available only to those who can prove a “need to know” and a direct relationship to the information.
Luxemburg, Cyprus, Malta and Spain are the only four of the 27 EU countries still without a law establishing the public’s right-to-know. That appeared set to change in Spain when in August 2010, the Socialist government published a draft legislation recognising the public’s right to access a wide range of information, and establishing guidelines for enforcing that access. Such a law has been promised since 2004, but this was the first time it was initiated. The draft legislation was strong: public agencies would have 30 days to respond to requests for information, and in most cases would be obligated to provide it. The law would, for the first time in Spanish history, mandate the public’s right-to-know.
But, since the August release of the draft law, nothing has been done to move it through the legislature. Helen Darbishire, the director of Access Info, an NGO that has campaigned for a right-to-know law in Spain since 2006, said from her office in Madrid, that she’s not holding her breath for it to become law. “At the moment [November 2010], they say it is “paralysed”. Certainly, if there’s no outside pressure it wouldn’t surprise me if it doesn’t turn up again. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of political will to adopt it.”
The legislation is not paralysed, according to the government, but rather in a modification process. Félix Monteira, the Spanish Secretary of State for Communication, said: “We proposed it, and then we realised we hadn’t taken some things into account. We’re trying to work out the level of information and training to give the administrations of the autonomous regions and the municipalities. This law will apply only to Spain’s central administration, but you also have to think that citizens will demand precise information about the things nearest to their homes. We want this law to work as an encouragement to the other public administrations to open themselves. There is a wide disparity between the size and capacity of regional and municipal governments, and we’re trying to map out how that can work.
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