Spain: Dispute over Spanish asylum law
01 January 1996
The Spanish ombudsman, Fernando Alvarez de Miranda, has criticized the Ministry of Justice and Interior for its practice of systematically rejecting asylum applications without looking at the details of each case. According to the ombudsman, of the 3,466 petitions for asylum during the first six months of 1995, 2,000 were not accepted into the procedure for being "manifestly unfounded". Miranda considers that this measure may only be applied to applicants for asylum in very exceptional cases. But Margarita Robles, the vice-minister of Interior, denied criticisms of the ombudsman, stating that in all cases of non-acceptance into the proceedings the decision had been made for objective reasons and after an individualized study. Nevertheless she admitted that in the future the decisions of the Office for Asylum, which are handed to the claimants, must be made in a clearer way and not, as they are now, using general arguments as reasons for non-acceptance.
The Ministry of Interior says that of those applying at borders, from 1 of January to 15 of December 1995, 130 applications were accepted and 132 rejected. Of the 4,280 applications (excluding those at the borders), 2314 were accepted into the procedure but asylum was only granted in 411 cases, and 137 persons have been "regularized" for humanitarian reasons.
Amnesty International is asking for a change in the "Law on Asylum" to ensure the protection of people "threatened by non-state agents" and to give asylum seekers the right to have a lawyer present.
Kontrola Kontrolpean, Donostia, Euskadi.