Annual Report 2010 by the National Preventive Mechanism against Torture III. Brief Introduction to the Office of Ombudsman of Spain Framework of competences 12. Since this first report to the SPT by Spain’s NPM is aimed largely at the of the Ombudsman international community, it is perhaps advisable to provide a brief outline of the competences and functions of the Office of the Ombudsman. High commissioner of the 13. The figure of the Ombudsman [Defensor del Pueblo in Spanish] was Spanish parliament: introduced into the body of law in Spain in the Constitution of 1978, Article 54 introduced into Spanish law in the Constitution of 1978 of which defines his/her role as a “high commissioner of the Spanish parliament charged with defending the fundamental freedoms and rights enshrined in Chapter One of the Constitution” . To that end the Ombudsman is charged with monitoring the activities of the public administration. The Constitutional Court [Tribunal Constitucional] has since established that the concept of “administration” as used in the Constitution extends to all public administrations in Spain. Non-judicial guarantor of 14. Spain’s constitutional structure establishes a complex judicial system that fundamental freedoms provides two main types of guarantee: on the one hand judicial guarantees regulated (with the exception of supranational matters regulated for instance within the scope of the UN, the Council of Europe and the European Union) within the scope of internal jurisdiction via appeals to the Constitutional Court or by the corresponding procedures in the ordinary courts of law; and on the other hand non-judicial guarantees, prominent among which are those provided by the Office of the Ombudsman through its day-to-day work. It can bring habeas corpus The Office of the Ombudsman is also empowered to request judicial control of proceedings and file deprivation of liberty through habeas corpus proceedings and also to file appeals appeals with the Constitutional Court with the Constitutional Court on grounds of unconstitutionality and appeals for the protection of constitutional rights. Its capital characteristics 15. All issues related to the make-up, organisation and workings of the Office of are autonomy and the Ombudsman are subordinated to two capital characteristics: its autonomy independence and its independence. Thus, Article 6.1 of the LODP states that “The Ombudsman shall not be subject to any imperative mandate, shall not receive instructions from any authority and shall perform his/her tasks autonomously and according to his/her own criteria”. The Ombudsman‘s As an institutional assurance of the independent status of the Office of the independence is Ombudsman, the legislators have established a number of legal measures guaranteed by law, and is compliant with Art. 18.1 of the OPCAT such as the special majority required for the appointment of the holder of the Office (three-fifths of the members of the upper and lower houses of parliament); a specific mandate deliberately established to be different from and longer than a parliamentary legislature; the provision of a 16 THE OMBUDSMAN OF SPAIN