Annual report 2011: Spain’s National Preventive Mechanism The conclusions of the Annual Report 2010 were followed up in 2011 37.  During the period covered by this report work was done with the competent authorities to monitor the general and specific conclusions recorded in the Annual Report 2010. The responses of the various authorities are recorded in the tables at the end of this section. The conclusions reached following the inspection visits made to places of shortterm deprivation of liberty in 2011 are outlined below. The shortcomings in video surveillance pointed out in the 2010 report persist The CNP and the GC have undertaken to install cameras in cells as funding becomes available A recommendation was made regarding the need to install video-surveillance systems at places of shortterm deprivation of liberty. The Ombudsman does not consider this as an infringement of the privacy rights of detainees 56  38. Most of the video surveillance systems observed at the establishments inspected in 2011 fail to meet the criteria indicated in paragraph 477 of the Annual Report 2010 as regards extending those systems to all establishments where persons deprived of liberty may be present, including the route to cells, with the exception of bathrooms, rooms for meetings with legal counsel, ministers of religion and family visits. It is considered that recordings should also incorporate audio. Notwithstanding, both the CNP and the GC have made an undertaking to have cameras installed in the cells at their respective establishments as funding becomes available for that purpose. Evidence of this was observed on the visits made in 2011 to the Central District Station and the Central Registry of Detainees in Madrid, where it was observed that comprehensive video-surveillance equipment had been installed in the cell areas. Similarly, the DGP reports that new cameras have been installed at the Primary Assistance and Detention Centre for Foreign Nationals at the port of Almería. On the inspection visit made in 2011 to the Girona police station of the Mossos d’Esquadra it was observed that (just as had been the case at the establishments of this force inspected in 2010) the system in place did not allow audio recordings to be made in all parts of the cell area. The Ombudsman again advised that such a system be incorporated. At Ertzaintza establishments video-surveillance does not cover the interior of the cells, as the Basque Government Dept. of the Interior holds that such measures would contravene the privacy rights of detainees. In this regard the Supreme Court has generally ruled that cells occupied by inmates at places of long-term deprivation of liberty are areas where occupants are entitled to privacy and that although inmates “… may be deprived of their liberty, that does not entirely override their right to personal and family privacy as guaranteed for all persons in general by Article 18 of the Constitution” (Supreme Court Ruling 7/04 FJ 1). For its part the Constitutional Court has asserted that one of the most painful of all the major constraints in terms of loss of liberty entailed by confinement and prison sentences for the privacy of those who suffer them is the reduction of their private space practically to the scope of their inner lives, while many situations commonly regarded as private and intimate are exposed to public scrutiny and even require authorisation. Such constraints – the special need to maintain areas of privacy unaffected by the sentence or the measures for its enforcement – must ipso facto be considered unlawful on grounds of breach of privacy and thus as degrading treatment when they go beyond the min-   THE OMBUDSMAN OF SPAIN