• Se confirma la inclusión de la Casa Real, el Banco de España, los partidos políticos, sindicatos y patronal en la ley, sin aclarar por el momento los detalles • A pesar de las demandas de partidos en minoría y de la sociedad civil, el Gobierno es rotundo: el acceso a la información no será un derecho fundamental • El Gobierno mantiene su intención de excluir los documentos que se utilizan para la toma decisiones -borradores e informes-, tal y como se señala en el artículo 15   Madrid – 30 de mayo de 2013 – El Pleno del

Madrid, 29 May 2013 - Today, members of the Access Info team have been invited by the Spanish political party Izquierda Plural to witness the third session of interventions on the future Spanish Transparency law. The debate in the Spanish Congress will deal with the range of amendments to the entire law, which are being introduced by the majority of the political parties, whilst civil society considers the law to still be insufficient and not up to scratch in meeting international standards. Victoria Anderica, Campaign Coordinator at Access Info, reviews party by party the reasons behind the amendments to the

How to avoid the closure of rural schools with data Madrid, 28 May 2013 – The right of Access to information isn’t just something that deals with transparency in an abstract, disconnected manner, it is also a way of improving day-to-day life through access to objective information. Some of the stories about the excommissioner for information of Scotland, Kevin Dunion, demonstrate the practical application of this right, through concrete victories. How would these cases run in Spain? This is something that is very difficult to compare without a law that requires public administrations to respond to citizens questions. But we

Madrid, 20 May 2013 – Spain’s future Transparency Law remains stalled in the Parliament, which continues to invite selected experts to address the Constitutional Commission, although Access Info Europe has not yet been invited to present its criticisms of the draft. A summary of the latest interventions by experts such as Soledad Becerril, Àngels Barbarà, Borja Bergareche, Ignacio Escolar and Manuel Villoria, can be found here. There is also no news on Spain’s Open Government Partnership plans: the action plan presented to the OGP in April 2012 is still unavailable in Spanish on any government website, and there has been

  • Access Info Europe and Fundación Ciudadana Civio present the report Tuderechoasaber.es 2012, which analyses the information requests sent to the institutions from this webpage. • Only 13% of the questions obtained requested information from the institutions (75 of 567). • The future Transparency Law is insufficient and will not improve access to information in practice Madrid, 9 April 2013 – One year after the entry into the political agenda of the Transparency Law (the draft was presented on March 26, 2012), and approaching the deadline to amend it in Congress, citizens still have not received appropriate attention from

          Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Access Info Europe unite to enforce compliance with European legislation Madrid, 14th of March 2013 – FOE and Access Info Europe have lodged an appeal to the Ministry of agriculture, food and environment demanding that it complies with European standards of transparency and that it publish the exact data about the location of the fields of commercial genetically modified (GM) crops. The appeal challenges the lack of information given by the Ministry in response to a request submitted on 17 December 2012 (available at tuderechoasaber.es). The request called for

Madrid, 13 March 2013 – It’s been 228 days since Spain’s transparency law entered the national parliament (Congress) and since then there has been no information about the current state of the law, although we do know that the deadline for presenting amendments has been amended no less then twenty (20) times. The Constitutional Commission which has been given responsibity to consider the draft has not published a timetable nor has announced if there will be more hearings on the law: to date eight “experts” have been invited to speak to the parliamentarians (one of them stated in his intervention

Madrid, 12 March 2013 — Spain’s Ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo) has severely criticised the secrecy of the Madrid regional government (Community of Madrid), the regional government of Madrid, in regards to the macro project Eurovegas and demands total transparency on this topic. The Ombudsman has singled out this project as one of “exceptional public interest”, therefore the Community of Madrid needs to be transparent regarding how much they know about the future leisure centre, and must inform interested parties.Since the intention to build Eurovegas in Madrid came to light, the Plataform Eurovegas No (the Platform) has made 12 requests to