The Spanish Senate, dominated by the PP, has recently made a series of repressive proposals aimed at Basque political prisoners, with the support of Vox. Two legal initiatives have been put forward to prohibit public receptions of prisoners (the so-called “welcome”), and to make prisoners apologize to aggravate blackmail. In order to meet these goals, they would need to amend a number of laws.

Prohibiting the reception of prisoners would require, for example, changes to several organic laws, the Penal Code, the Gag Law and prison regulations, according to Europa Press. According to the PP, there would be "all the events, concentrations, meetings or demonstrations" that could allow "the image of the victims of terrorism to be victimized by humiliation and aggression." In addition, the legislative proposal includes the possibility of sanctioning public administrations if they do not enforce the aforementioned prohibitions.

On the other hand, the intention of the PP is also to reform the Electoral Law in order to impose an obligation on people who want to be convicted of "terrorism": if they want to be part of the electoral lists, they will have to prove their forgiveness or repentance. In October 2024 they also tried to carry out this initiative, but it was not approved in the Congress of Deputies.

In any case, they also want to take the blackmail of having to apologize further: if they want to advance in the graduation system while in prison, political prisoners will have to show repentance in a "demonstrable" way, that is, they "renounce the criminal acts committed, show remorse, reject the will to retake and will help to investigate crimes pending clarification and prevent similar crimes." What’s more, they want to encourage political prisoners to participate in police investigations.

The PP has an absolute majority in the Senate and the proposals have been approved, so they will begin the procedures for their implementation. But then they have to be approved by the Congress of Deputies. Some proposals of this type were also elaborated in 2024, but were rejected.

The new investigations

The intention of the PP, together with the aforementioned legislative proposals, is to launch new investigations into unsolved armed actions, which are said to be 379, within a period of three months. Such investigations would be conducted jointly with the Prosecutor ' s Office and the police forces and would not take into account whether or not the cases were subject to a statute of limitations. In addition, the PP has requested that an analysis be made of whether or not the militants considered to be the leaders of the ETA can be charged with the acts under investigation and charged with responsibility for them.