The Government has set a date for one of the historic demands of the left and which is also a commitment of the coalition Executive for seven years: the suppression of the crime against religious feelings from the Penal Code. It will be throughout the new year when the reform is brought to Parliament, after the first hours of 2025 saw a new judicial offensive by the extreme right and the Catholic Church due to a comment made live by the comedian Laura Yustres, Lalachus, in charge of presenting the New Year’s Eve chimes on public television with David Broncano. The communicator had also been suffering for days from a harassment campaign online due to her physical appearance.
A few minutes before the grapes and, as a joke, the presenter showed the viewers a picture that she claimed served as an amulet and brought her good luck: an image of the ‘Grand Prix’ mascot on the background of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The montage, very recurrent in the world of football or music with players or artists, has been the perfect excuse for ultra associations such as Hazte Oír or Abogados Cristianos to have announced a complaint for “possible crime of hate and against religious feelings.” .
Even the Episcopal Conference has followed this campaign against Lalachus, which has taken the same side as the two far-right organizations. Its president, Monsignor Luis Argüello, even made use of his social networks to point out the public channel on his social networks. “It saddens me that with the alibi of freedom of expression and the excesses of the holidays, TVE makes fun of the symbol of the Heart so loved by all Catholics. The saddest thing is that those responsible are not aware of what they are doing. Once again banality surrounds us,” he argued.
The controversy has not taken long to jump into politics. From the Government parties there have been several voices that have expressed their support for the comedian now attacked by the extreme right. The most notable, that of the Minister of Justice. Félix Bolaños conveyed his support to Lalachus and also warned on his social networks that the Government is working on the reform of the Penal Code to eliminate types of crimes such as offenses against religious feelings, which in many cases directly clash with the right to freedom of expression. expression.
“Day 1 and the ultras’ first attempt to intimidate. In 2025 we will promote the reform of the crime of religious offenses to guarantee freedom of expression and creation, a measure of the Action Plan for Democracy,” Bolaños stated in his account on X.
Sources from the Ministry of Justice explain that the “commitment” contained in the aforementioned plan refers to the comprehensive reform of criminal types that can have a deterrent effect on freedom of expression and creation and they consider “evident” that the crime of offense to religious feelings can have that effect. In any case, these sources affirm that the way in which this legal change is carried out “must still be studied at a technical and political level” in the coordination bodies of the Action Plan for Democracy.
The reform is committed by the Government with its coalition partner, Sumar, and with the set of progressive parties that support Pedro Sánchez’s Executive in Congress within the aforementioned plan that the Council of Ministers distills in dribs and drabs and without losing sight of the complicated numbers of the parliamentary majority that the reforms require.
This Thursday, the spokesperson for Justice and the Interior of the Sumar parliamentary group, Enrique Santiago, called on the PSOE to complete the reform of the crime of religious offenses, which has been frozen in Congress for more than a year. “It’s taking a while,” he urged in a message published on his X account.
The wording of this plan expressly proposes “to address a comprehensive reform of the articles of the Penal Code that may affect the right to freedom of expression and artistic creation, among other cases when it refers to State institutions, crimes against religious feelings or public ridicule or other assumptions.” A text that, in Sumar’s opinion, also includes the reform of the crime of offenses against the Crown.
In recent years, there has been a surge in judicial proceedings in Spain on criminal offenses such as outrages against national symbols, insults to the Crown, glorification of terrorism or crimes against religious sentiments. And their reform will finally be a fact in 2025, as announced by the Executive, as it is a historic demand for parliamentary support such as Podemos, ERC or EH Bildu and a pending commitment from the Government of Pedro Sánchez since 2018.
What the Penal Code says
The Penal Code distinguishes between religious freedom – which is what is violated, for example, by preventing acts of worship – and the “ridicule” of religious beliefs, which is the offense of the feelings of the members of a religious confession through of words, writings or any type of document. This last behavior, punishable by up to 12 months of fine, is what the Government intends to “comprehensively reform or repeal,” according to sources from the department headed by Félix Bolaños.
In fact, these same sources affirm that this reform “will not mean the lack of protection of a fundamental right, because the right of people not to be discriminated against for their confession or beliefs is already protected in the figure of hate crimes and the fundamental right “Religious freedom is included in other articles of the Penal Code, such as those that punish preventing a person from participating in religious ceremonies through force or intimidation.”
But they do believe that it is time to “heed the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on defamation and its legal implications”, as stated in the regeneration plan. In this regard, the Strasbourg Court points out that freedom of expression can only be limited with criminal sanctions in cases of incitement to hatred. It also states that “prohibiting demonstrations of disrespect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws” is “incompatible” with the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that Spain signed in 1985.
The jurisprudence of the ECtHR insists that freedom of expression not only protects ideas considered harmless or indifferent, but also especially protects the freedom of criticism when it is insipid or may bother and displease the person it is addressed to, since pluralism requires it. and tolerance without which democratic societies would not exist. The majority theses suggest that the only possibility of a restriction of this right is in relation to speeches that involve a direct incitement to violence or that delve into the discrimination that vulnerable groups already suffer.
Other international organizations such as the Venice Commission – a consultative body dependent on the Council of Europe made up of independent experts in constitutional law – also affirm that only incitement to religious hatred should be criminally prosecuted, but not offenses to religious feelings nor blasphemy.
Complaints destined for archive
Despite criticism from Europe, derision of religious beliefs is a criminal offense that ultra-Catholic entities such as Christian Lawyers, Hazte Oír, Spanish Alternative or the Vasconavarra Falange have tried to revive in the last decade. Although it is practically an anecdote in the Spanish judicial reality, these procedures attract great media attention and, at times, represent a true judicial ordeal for the defendants.
This was the case of three women prosecuted for having participated in the so-called ‘procession of the unruly pussy’ in Seville in 2014. After almost six years of proceedings, they were acquitted by a judge who supported that protest in the debate on abortion. However, a feminist activist was convicted of a crime against religious feelings for carrying a plastic vagina in a procession in Malaga. In that case, the ruling of a court, which was later confirmed by the Provincial Court, considered that the ‘holy chumino rebel’ of Malaga had “evident intention to ridicule and mock gratuitously a Catholic tradition strongly rooted” in society.
Other media cases that did end up being archived or acquitted in court were the trial of singer-songwriter Javier Krahe for a video in which a Christ was being cooked, comedian Dani Mateo’s joke about the Valley of the Fallen or cultural representations such as the ‘butcher shops’. vaticans’, the performance Amenin which the artist Abel Azcona wrote the word “pederasty” with 242 consecrated hosts, or that of the Drag Sethlas, who dressed as a virgin at the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria carnival.
Sources from the Ministry of Justice recognize that it is a crime for which there are practically no convictions, since jurisprudence has restricted it so that it does not collide with other fundamental rights. “But the problem is not that, but the continuous complaints for intimidating purposes by far-right and fundamentalist organizations. “They are not seeking a conviction, but rather to restrict the freedom of expression of secular and progressive people and groups, especially artists,” say these same sources, who insist that “any of these processes represents enormous pressure on those affected and an implicit threat to others.” artists so that they do not freely express their opinion if they believe that this will place them in the crosshairs of these groups.”
With these precedents and, beyond the reform, complaints such as the one made against Lalachus seem to be destined for archiving in accordance with the doctrine of both the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court that served to leave these other media cases in a dead letter. Thus, this doctrine requires that there be an affront to beliefs and “firm, stubborn and tenacious” ridicule. That is, a deliberate intention to offend the religious feelings of the members of the Catholic Church, an institution that was not even mentioned by the comedian, who limited herself to showing a picture of a heifer from the TVE Grand Prix program that simulates the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Source: www.eldiario.es
