Annual Report 2010 by the National Preventive Mechanism against Torture
judgement issued on 11 May 2005 that affected articles 30, sections 1, 2, 3, 6, 8
and 9 (visits and communications); article 34 (measures for upholding law and
order in detention centres) and section 5 of article 33 (seizure). It should be noted
that Royal Decree 557/2011 approved a new Regulation for developing Public
General Act 4/2000 that dedicates an article to CIEs (art. 258) and defers, in its
section 8, to a specific regulation of the detention regime for foreign nationals.
As a result of a
251. The Ombudsman, when submitting its report on legal support for foreign
recommendation made by
nationals in Spain to the Spanish Parliament in 2005, recommended the creation
the Ombudsman, the figure
of detention judge has
been created
of the figure of detention judge, as it was noted that the necessary individual
and effective supervision of detention was being hindered, as this befell the
judge ordering it in the first place and who did not always coincide with the
areas where the foreign national was detained. It should be welcomed that
Public General Act 2/2009, which amended Public General Act 4/2000,
introduced, in its article 62.6, the figure of judge empowered to supervise the
stay of foreign nationals in detention centres and in holding areas for persons
refused entry into the country, which corresponds to the examining magistrate
where the centres are located.
Of the 9 centres in Spain,
252. Spain has a total of nine detention centres, with inspection visits being
2010 saw inspection visits
made in 2010 to six of them [Algeciras (Cadiz), Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga,
to the 6 with the highest
percentage of occupancy
Murcia and Valencia] with seven establishments. This is because the Isla de las
Palomas facilities in Tarifa (Cadiz) are formally considered to be an annex to the
Algeciras CIE. On this very matter, the Ombudsman has drawn attention to the
lack of precision of the legal statute governing these establishments and the
ensuing absence or insufficient provisioning of some of the basic services a
detention centre should provide to comply with its governing regulations. Priority
has been given to the inspection visits to the CIE with the highest percentages of
average occupancy (all the centres visited exceeded 55%). Along these lines, note
should be made of the sharp drop in internees at the three centres in the Canary
Islands [Puerto del Rosario in Fuerteventura and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
(Las Palmas) and Santa Cruz de Tenerife], where the number of inmates has fallen
from 21,591 recorded in 2006 to 616 in 2010.
112
THE OMBUDSMAN OF SPAIN
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