Annual Report 2012: Spain’s National Preventive Mechanism Legal Duties have been carried out, the content of which is detailed throughout this report. At the visited places, photos are taken and included in the appropriate records The NPM has a preventive mission, and its goal is to promote changes of operational and regulatory nature, if necessary The procedure to appoint members of the Advisory Council to the NPM went into effect in February 2013 14 4. The Institution has followed the criteria established in previous years about conducting unannounced visits (with the exception of three which were carried out together with foreign delegations) at any time of the day or night, as well as obtaining photos of the centers, which are integrated into the appropriate records and some of them are also included in this report. 5. It is necessary to remember that the action of the NPM is -as its very name implies-, of a preventive nature, and its goal is to promote the necessary changes, at both regulatory and operational level, in order to hinder and, ideally, prevent, the occurrence of cases of torture or ill-treatment. On becoming aware of the al­ leged commission of a fact which might be codified as torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, arising from a visit, through the mass media or by means of a document from the interested persons or third parties, it is then reported to the relevant area of the Ombudsman Institution to establish, as the case may be, if it is appropriate to open an investigation. Notwithstanding this, the NPM carries out a study of the complaints submitted and the investigations conducted at the Institution, in order to determine the visits which are to be implemented during the year. A record of the eventual handling of complaints or ex officio cases (ex­ pedientes de oficio) due to ill-treatment is made in the relevant sections of the Annual Report of the Ombudsman Institution. However, in order to better in­ form on the work carried out by the Ombudsman Institution regarding torture and ill-treatment within its reactive aspect, and likewise, so as to contextualize with specific cases the framework in which the action of the NPM takes place, it has been deemed appropriate to include in this Report, and in the successive ones, an Appendix containing a summarized version of the action taken by the Ombudsman Institution in this field. 6. On the other hand, as was already pointed out in paragraphs 10 of the 2010 Annual Report and 11 of the 2011 Annual Report, the complete design of the NPM established by means of Organic Law 1/2009, of 3 November, which intro­ duced a single final provision in the Organic Law on the Spanish Ombudsman Institution, entailed setting up the Advisory Council. The reform of the Regula­ tions governing the Ombudsman Institution where the creation of the Advisory Council was provided for, was approved in 2012 (Agreement of the Spanish Chamber of Congress and Senate Bureau of 25 January 2012, Official State Ga­ zette no. 52, of 1 March). The procedure to appoint members to the Advisory Council of the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture went into effect by means of the Resolution of 27 February 2013 from the Spanish Ombudsman (Official State Gazette no. 62, of 13 March). THE OMBUDSMAN OF SPAIN