A Spanish woman has been given a fine of €800 because she used her Facebook page to post a photograph of a police vehicle parked illegally in a disabled bay.
The comment “Park where you bloody well please and you won’t even be fined” accompanied the picture.
The punishment was warranted under the new Citizen Security Law, popularly dubbed the gagging law because it limits freedom of speech.
The controversial law entered into force at the beginning of July and forbids, among other things, “the unauthorised use of images of police officers that might jeopardise their or their family’s safety or that of protected facilities or police operations”.
In the view of Amnesty International, photos of police were vital in cases where excessive force has been used. Many of such photos have been told a different side to that of the police recently in the US.
Fines for this offence go from €600 to €30,000.
A police spokesperson said the police used the disabled bay because they had to act swiftly to catch offenders in the act of reported vandalism in a nearby park. He noted that police park where they can in an emergency.
The officers felt their honour had been impugned when the picture was posted, according to the spokesperson, so the matter was referred to town hall.
He also said: “We would have preferred a different solution but they (the town hallo authorities) have the legal right to impose the fine.”
The new law allows fines of up to €600,000 for demonstrations, now forbidden, near the parliament or senate buildings, for preventing an eviction order being carried out or conducting passive resistance such as sit-down protests in the streets.
