Read My Lips: Spanish freedom of information

The first of May 1997 was a glorious spring day, so also was the second of May, its gloriousness only slightly tarnished by tiredness and a hangover. Blair had stormed to victory, a new age beckoned, there was joy throughout the land, but then the storm clouds of government gathered and we came to realise that Blair was not a regular guy but just another fake.

Amidst the detail of the Blair project was that of the freedom of information. It may not have been an element of the pre-election manifesto that had played strongly with the electorate, but it was a vital ingredient in representing Labour as something more than just the "new" adjective with which it had been tagged.

That what eventually became the Freedom Of Information Act was so watered down was the beginning of the end for Blair, and the process towards this dilution came very early on in his premiership. The sacking of David Clark little more than a year into government exposed the sophism of New Labour; for me, it never recovered.

For all this, though, and for better or for worse, the United Kingdom does have freedom of information legislation. Spain, on the other hand, doesn't, and the absence of open access to official records and so on is something that the Rajoy government intends to address.

The so-called Transparency and Good Government Law, due for debate in parliament later this year, is intended to bring Spain more into line with practice in the European Union and elsewhere. Intended to, but almost certainly won't. Spain's reputation as one of the most secretive, if not the most secretive, countries in the developed world is not about to be lost. 

The law, assuming it is eventually passed, paves the way for there being access to information regarding public spending and the financial affairs of public officials, but this is about all it would open up. A Spanish Government spin of the law being a means of countering corruption is just this - spin; freedom of information, Spanish-style, is lip service and nothing more.

Though the UK law unleashed something of a monster that Blair would have preferred hadn't been (he couldn't put the genie back in the bottle completely; not even he was that two-faced), the Spanish law won't make whole rafts of information available to the public and in particular journalists. Nor will it allow for requests. Despite a constitutional commitment to freedom of speech, Spanish journalism is constrained by unwritten as well as some written rules that limit this as well as by the sheer secrecy of Spanish public life.

The law as it is outlined is already somewhat irrelevant. Publication of personal financial details by politicians already occurs, while information regarding contracts can be found on some websites, even those of local authorities. To describe the law as transparent is to be ignorant of what the word should imply, and the lack of transparency in public affairs has been a theme for some time and right down to the micro level of the town halls. Pollensa was and remains a good example. Transparency was an issue at the municipal election and still is an issue.

Information and transparency at local authority level are meant to have improved, but once again they are paid lip service to more than they are actualised. Citizen participation groups, under the auspices of town halls, and the creation of local associations of agitating residents which aren't under town-hall control have failed or been unable to create greater openness.

But why is there such apparent secrecy in Spain when there isn't elsewhere (or when there is less of it)? Partly it is a consequence of lingering suspicion of what democracy entails. This is a country that is still trying to figure this out, nearly forty years on. And in a land where religion continues to play a significant if diminished role, it gives succour to suspicion as suspicion is religion's fellow traveller. For the church and organisations associated with it, such as Opus Dei, the last thing they want is freedom of information.

Partly it stems also from the fact that there were (and are) good reasons to keep things hidden, and Lord alone knows how many other corruption skeletons are residing in the cupboards that various parties, and not just political parties, would prefer remained there, not to be uninterred by a press that is partially emasculated by conspiracies of obfuscation and silence.

The new law will pay lip service to freedom of information, lip service offered by the reading of Rajoy's lips - you want information, well you won't get it. (And where is this adapted line borrowed from?)


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.