News

The Office of the Ombudsman has presented at the Parliament Registry a summary of the first six months of the year, during which time a total of 8,970 courses of action were taken, 8,462 of which were complaints by members of the public, 494 own-initiative inquiries and 14 unconstitutionality appeal petitions.

Most of the complaints have to do with public function and employment matters (1,562), financial activity (1,088) and administration of justice (901).

The Ombudsman, Soledad Becerril, has highlighted the effort made by the institution “to serve members of the public better, reduce action and response times and ask the authorities for more speed in their replies”. At present, the Office takes 27 days on average in the first response to members of the public, as opposed to the 62 days taken in 2013.

From January to June 2016, the Office of the Ombudsman drafted 748 resolutions (268 recommendations, 337 suggestions and 143 reminders of legal duties) to the authorities.

Of particular note among the recommendations drafted were:

• Recommendations for municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants to guarantee food for minors who are on Holiday (esp)
• Recommendation to speed up the postal vote from abroad (esp)
• Recommendation to regulate the debt-collection activity and protect debtors’ Rights (esp)
• Recommendations for improving coordination between the national and autonomous-regional security corps and forces in the fight against people trafficking and for preferential treatment to be given to processing applications for residence and work permits filed by the victims of this crime owing to exceptional circumstances (esp)

Some of the main own-initiative inquiries had to do with:

• ATM usage fees (esp)
• Sobre demoras en cirugía plástica reparadora tras intervenciones de cáncer de mama Delays in repair-related plastic surgery following breast cancer operations (esp)
• The habitual residence notion for personal income tax purposes (esp)
• The measures envisaged for improving instruments for detecting the risk of gender violence and protecting victims (esp)
• The aid programmes for covering the additional cost of the diet that people with coeliac disease have to follow (esp)
• Regulating the conditions that must be met by special education classrooms for pupils with pervasive developmental disorder (esp)
• The interoperability of electronic prescriptions (esp)
• The rise in the number of assaults on civil servants (esp)
• The fire in a tyre depot in Seseña (Toledo) (esp)

The list of obstructing authorities (esp) can be browsed on the web site. Currently 32 authorities have not replied to the third request for information. Of which 29 are local authorities and 3, autonomous regional authorities.

During the first six months of the year the report for 2015 was drawn up by the Office of the Ombudsman in its capacity as a National Torture Prevention Mechanism, as well as a study on “Asylum in Spain. International protection and the resources of the intake system”.

Download the report here (esp)