Public spaces and the exercise of fundamental rights in Spain following the approval of the organic law for the protection of public safety

Abstract

This study is primarily an analysis of Organic Law 4/2015, 30 March, of the protection of public safety as a paradigm of the stigmatisation of public disorder and political, cultural and social life on the streets, in the face of which it aims to achieve a kind of civic 'tranquility'. In the new public space 2.0, those who take their grievances and protests to the streets and public infrastructure, those who publish images 'without prior police authorisation', and even those who are simply trying to find a way to survive on the streets, are considered enemies of that 'tranquility'. Despite the undoubted improvement of the law's wording compared to the shameful draft, which came in for especially harsh criticism from the Prosecutorial Advisory Board and the General Judicial Council, this rule represents the translation of the premises of the most recent reforms of the Criminal Code to punishment under administrative law: the criminalisation of public spaces to impede the rise of 'the dangerous classes'.