Presentation The Spanish Ombudsman Institution (Defensor del Pueblo), which at the same time is the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (NPM), reaches its third year in the exercise of this responsibility and hereby submits the annual report per­ taining to the Spanish Parliament (Cortes Generales) and to the United Nations Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture (SPT). In February 2012 the Spanish NPM appeared before said Subcommittee in order to submit the first annual report, and since then several contacts have been maintained. This exercise shows continuity with the path undertaken and also the changes required to improve the performance of the assigned mandate; an effort has been made to carry out a relevant number of visits, and external technical ex­ perts in several scientific disciplines have been included in those visits which could be considered more complex; priority has been given to a better under­ standing of the situation of the persons deprived of liberty through interviews and questionnaires; while this Institution has continued our intense collabora­ tion with other NPMs, sharing the experiences and methodologies used while carrying out the visits, with the preventive approach which is the trademark of all NPMs. A relevant novelty has been the publication in the Spanish Official State Gazette (BOE) of 13 March 2013 of the Resolution of 27 February from the Ombudsman, opening the procedure for the appointment of members of the Advisory Council to the NPM. The imminent appointment and constitution of the Advisory Coun­ cil (Consejo Asesor) shall complete the institutional design established by the legislator, and facilitate the legal and technical cooperation of such body with the tasks of the NPM. This year’s report includes, for the first time, some annexes with the charts of the conclusions obtained after each visit, as well as the monitoring carried out after sending the conclusions of the previous years’ visits, thus facilitating the consul­ tation of each visited facility. Likewise, to answer the worries which have appeared in the sphere of civil society, and appendix has been included with the summary of the actions taken by the Ombudsman Institution in the matters where the NPM acts in a preventive way. This dimension is more extensively developed in the general annual report of the Institution. Also as a novelty, a social health care center has been visited and a repatriation flight for foreigners, organized by FRONTEX (European Agency for the Man­ agement of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union), has been monitored. The significant number of visits conducted over a three-year period and the depth of such visits has allowed us to carry out an analysis on the situation of the THE OMBUDSMAN OF SPAIN 5