An enduring sovereign mode of punishment: Post-dictatorial penal policies in Spain

Introduction: Late-democratisation and penality in the Spanish case

The most recent Spanish dictatorship ended in 1975–1977, ¹ thus rendering Spain a country of late democratisation. According to Huntington's (1991) account, Spain is categorised as part of the third and most contemporary wave of democratisation (see also Cheliotis and Xenakis, 2016). ² This attribute appears to be even more appropriate if one bears in mind that during the two centuries of Modernity, Spain scarcely experienced any periods of actual parliamentary democracy. Indeed, with the exception of the period commencing in 1975–1977, only the brief lapse of the ‘Second Spanish Republic’ may be considered an expression of that political system. ³ The republican regime, known as the Second Spanish Republic, ruled Spain from 1931 to 1936, followed by the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) before Francisco Franco's dictatorship took hold (1939–1975/1977). The other formally non-dictatorial periods of the last two centuries, instead, witnessed simulated democratic regimes, organised around a model of power bargaining among various elites, which was frequently marred by widespread corruption and massive electoral frauds (Viejo Viñas, 2012). As a result, the Spanish polity has undergone a late and ‘low-profile’ (Pisarello, 2003; see also Rodríguez López, 2015) democratisation process, which cannot be disconnected from the conflictive and recent integration of the country into the process of capitalistic modernisation (Brendel and Simon, 2004; Vilar, 2004).

Two idiosyncrasies contribute to the characterisation of the Spanish polity as a model of late democratisation. First, there is the extraordinary length of the most recent dictatorial period, lasting from 1936 to 1975–1977. Second, the political transition leading to the current democratic phase, which was largely shaped by the dictatorial elites, was not triggered by a popular uprising (Campadabal, 2012; Grimaldos, 2013; Rodríguez López, 2015). ⁴ The most direct implication of the latter characteristic has been the inability of the current political system to hold former officials liable for the massive human rights violations perpetrated during the Franco era ⁵ and to purge the dictatorship's administrative elite (Grimaldos, 2004; Lorenzo Rubio, 2013). ⁶ All this has led to certain disturbing inertias in the operation of the Spanish polity and subsequent impact on the criminal justice system (Jiménez Franco, 2016; Recasens i Brunet, 2007).

In terms of characterising the post-dictatorship Spanish criminal justice system, its most salient feature may be the impressive increase in prison population rates until 2010 (González Sánchez, 2014), as illustrated by Figure 1. OPEN IN VIEWER

At the beginning of the post-dictatorship period, prison population rates were strikingly low (Lorenzo Rubio, 2013; Varona, 2000). In fact, the dictatorial phase witnessed a stark and steady decline in the prison population (González Sánchez, 2014). The incarceration rate remained between 400 and 1100 per 100,000 inhabitants in the immediate aftermath of the civil war (1939–1942), and continued to fall thereafter; it descended abruptly to 100–200 in the period of 1945–1951, 50–100 in 1952–1960, and between 30 and 50 from 1961 to 1974 (Sources: INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística; National Institute of Statistics; www.ine.es); Carreras and Tafunell, 2005). Prison conditions, though, remained particularly dire over the whole autocratic period (Gómez Bravo and Lorenzo Rubio, 2013). Moreover, the death penalty was not abrogated until 1978, that is during the democratic period, despite the fact that it was seldom enforced from the 1960s until its abrogation (Oliver Olmo, 2008). Likewise, the repression conducted by the police and the judiciary system was undeniably severe over the last period of Francoism even though it was mostly political in nature (Casanellas Peñalver, 2014; Lorenzo Rubio, 2013).

By contrast, Spanish prison population rates have continuously increased since the inception of the democratic stage. As a matter of fact, they surpassed those of the other EU-15 countries over the last decade, with the notable exception of the UK.

While all this is significant in itself, comparing those incarceration rates with crime rates allows us to ascertain that the Spanish criminal justice system is also characterised by a high level of severity. ⁷ In fact, according to Eurostat data, Spain has a crime rate markedly lower than those of other major EU countries; though not lower than those of other Southern European countries (Díez Ripollés, 2006a, 2011, see also Cid and Larrauri, 2009). Crime rates of major EU-15 states (France, Germany and the UK) have stood between 60 and 100 criminal offences per 1000 inhabitants over the last two decades, whilst those of Southern European countries (Greece, Italy and Portugal) have remained within the range of 20–50 offences per 1000 inhabitants. Over the same period, crime rates in Spain have stood at 40–50 offences per 1000 inhabitants (Source: Eurostat).

This apparent contradiction between low crime rates and high prison population rates cannot be interpreted in a causal manner, as if greater penal severity is the cause of low crime rates (Tonry, 2004; Wacquant, 2009), insofar as the punitiveness of a criminal justice system is not a natural phenomenon but a constructed one, mainly the outcome of the complex interplay of three elements: legal reforms, institutional practices, and collective perceptions and expectations (Bell, 2011; Cavadino and Dignan, 2006; Western, 2006; see also González Sánchez, 2014).

The analysis of these three elements may help to answer questions arising from the post-dictatorial evolution of the Spanish criminal justice system. Legal reforms, institutional practices and collective perceptions and expectations will therefore be scrutinised, so as to form a clear and concise understanding of the penal expansionism and severity traits that have characterised the Spanish criminal justice system since the onset of the democratic period. The paper will subsequently delve into pivotal historical, political, cultural and socio-economic features that help expound the punitiveness of the Spanish criminal justice system and their relationship with the shortcomings of the democratisation process. In conclusion, the paper will briefly evaluate the changes undergone by the Spanish criminal justice system since the onset of the so-called Great Recession. ⁸ By considering different perspectives, this paper aims to further a more holistic understanding of the evolution of the Spanish criminal justice system in relation to the democratisation process while also posing an arguably more compelling question: May the Spanish case be read as an example of a distinct type of penality, which might be called ‘post-dictatorial penality’?

Legal reforms

An initial elucidation of the escalating punitiveness of the Spanish criminal justice system may be established from legal reforms, as Spanish criminal laws have progressively toughened throughout the post-dictatorship period.

Even though the abrogation of the Franco-era Penal Code was considered a most urgent legal reform within the democratisation process, the process of passing a new legislative act was extremely protracted, lasting from 1980 until a new Penal Code was finally enacted in 1995. Meanwhile, throughout this almost two-decade period the Spanish Parliament passed several critical legal reforms aimed at ‘democratising’ a highly authoritarian Penal Code. Among them, the 1979 Penitentiary Act, which set the legal basis for the construction of a fairly welfarist prison regime, the Organic Law no. 8/1983, which set the general rules of a rights-based model of penal liability, the Organic Law no. 9/1985, which partially decriminalised abortion, and the Organic Law no. 3/1989, which fostered a somewhat feminist agenda in relation to sex crimes and domestic violence, deserve particular emphasis.

These legal reforms notwithstanding, the claims of rehabilitation and penal moderation, so predominant immediately after Franco's death in 1975 (Medina-Ariza, 2006), had become outdated 20 years later. Therefore, the 1995 Penal Code is in some compelling ways more severe than the 1944–1973 Penal Code, particularly in regard to the most frequently prosecuted offences such as property or drug-related crimes (Cid Moliné, 2008; Díez Ripollés, 2006b). More precisely, a crucial expression of the harshness of the new legal regulation was the abrogation of the redención de penas por el trabajo (early release through prison work), a correctional scheme established during Franco's rule through the 1956 Prison Service Regulation. The program granted the vast majority of inmates the option to have the length of their imprisonment reduced by one-third, with the exception of inmates sanctioned as a result of unruly behaviour. Moreover, since 1995 dozens of legal reforms have made the Spanish penal legislation more severe, with very few exceptions (Serrano Maíllo and Serrano Gómez, 2009). As a consequence, even though the passage of the 1995 Penal Code led to the prompt release of a limited number of inmates, ⁹ its harshness sustained the constant and pronounced growth of the prison population during the 2000s (Cid Moliné, 2008; Cid and Larrauri, 2009). A vivid effect of the toughening of Spanish penal legislation has been the rise of the average duration of actual imprisonment from 9.7 months in 1996 (Tournier, 1998) to 17.4 months in 2009 (Aebi and Delgrande, 2012). ¹⁰

Even though the 1995 Penal Code introduced community service orders within the Spanish criminal justice system and somewhat reinforced the use of the conditionally suspended sentence, it is doubtful whether the legal reforms of the post-dictatorship period and the practices of law enforcement ensuing these modifications have successfully fostered a diversified and widely enforced catalogue of community sanctions. According to 2014 INE data, the prison sentence was still the most frequently applied sanction in the Spanish criminal justice system (25.5% of all sentences), followed by fines (20.3%) and then community service orders (9.3%). Yet, approximately half of the prison sentences are subsequently not enforced, since they are substituted with a conditionally suspended sentence, a fairly outdated probation-like measure that normally only involves low level supervision.

Moreover, from the 1990s onwards there has been salient political and popular pressure, in some measure fostered by crime victim movements, to abrogate parole in most serious cases and raise the maximum term of the prison sentence, a penal policy demand which was simultaneous to the ‘truth in sentencing’ shift in English-speaking countries. ¹¹ Consequently, the maximum prison term was raised from 30 to 40 years in 2003 and subsequently the life imprisonment sentence was reintroduced within the Spanish Penal Code in 2015, almost 90 years after its previous abrogation. ¹² Furthermore, due to the tightness of legal regulations in this regard, it has been estimated that in 2010 some 350 inmates were serving protracted prison sentences exceeding the formal maximum term. ¹³

Institutional practices

In contrast to legal reforms, it is at the level of institutional practices where the inertias of the dictatorial period and the consequences of the lack of a deep political breakdown may be most acutely felt.

In the realm of policing, the most striking feature in Spain is the remarkable lack of accountability in how the police operates (Defensor del Pueblo, 2015), which may be interpreted as an effect of the deficient democratic reform of Spanish police. As a consequence of this shortcoming, cases of police brutality and ill-treatment are reoccurring on a frequent basis, as reiterated by the Council of Europe's reports (Commissioner for Human Rights, 2013; CPT, 2013; Mendiola, 2014; Varona, 2000). This is evidenced by the frequency with which charges are pressed for assaulting or resisting a public officer, a charge commonly used by the police to conceal cases of brutality (Amnistía Internacional, 2014; Campaña Estatal por el Cierre de los CIE, 2014; Moreno Pérez, 2014). INE official data from 2014 accordingly show that this charge constituted the sixth most frequently sentenced crime in Spain (out of 81 crime categories). ¹⁴

In addition to the lack of accountability, policing in Spain raises two additional concerns. One is that Spanish riot police have persistently used rubber bullets, which are considered lethal by European Parliament reports (STOA Programme, 2000), and have produced numerous casualties among demonstrators since the onset of the democratic period (9 people have been killed and 30 have lost an eye; see Stop Bales de Goma, 2013). The second is the widespread utilisation by Spanish police forces of ethnic profiling, a racist technique denounced by the UN and by several NGOs (García Añón et al., 2013; García España et al., 2016; Open Society Justice Initiative, 2007), ¹⁵ but upheld by the Spanish Constitutional Court (ruling no. 13/2001). ¹⁶ A particularly disturbing implication of the lack of police accountability is the frequent impunity of illicit behaviour by the police, as evidenced between 1998 and 2012, a period during which the Spanish government pardoned 47 police officers convicted of torture. ¹⁷

The judiciary system in Spain is marked by a constant and acutely overwhelming workload (Domenech Pascual, 2009; García España and Díez Ripollés, 2012), a burden that customarily leads judges to overlook the most rigorous observation of the right to a fair trial. What is more, the spread of a conservative judicial culture should also be noted, especially among the higher ranks of the judiciary. ¹⁸ This context may well be influenced by the prominence of the Audiencia Nacional (National Higher Court). ¹⁹ An apparent consequence of this conservative trend is the limited sensitivity of the Spanish judiciary to rights-based criminal justice. One of the most conspicuous indicators of this is the Spanish Supreme Court's ruling (no. 197/2006, of 28 February 2006) which extended the maximum term of imprisonment beyond what was prescribed by the Penal Code, a decision eventually overturned by the ECHR in 2013 (Del Río Prada v. Spain case).

On paper, the Spanish prison system is based on an essentially rehabilitative model, established by the 1979 Penitentiary Act. This law, the first legal reform enacted after the proclamation of the 1978 Spanish Constitution, set forth a formally rehabilitative prison model, which may be regarded as the result of two basic factors: the memory of incarceration suffered during Franco's era by members of left-wing parties and the remarkable influence of experts in preparing the reform (Rivera Beiras, 2006). ²⁰ In this sense, it may well be considered a unique experience in recent Spanish criminal law history.

The post-dictatorship Spanish prison system has also been characterised by a high level of public expenditure on prison facilities and the expansion of the number of prison establishments. ²¹ In 1997, the Spanish prison system had an official capacity of more than 38,000 inmates (Tournier, 1998), while by 2015 this capacity had soared to more than 77,200 inmates, according to ICPS data. Such public spending has undoubtedly improved prison conditions and mitigated overcrowding, which in some periods peaked at a rate of 150% (Lorenzo Rubio, 2013). ²² Nonetheless, the Spanish prison system has failed to meet the rehabilitative expectations of the 1979 Act (Varona, 2000). The constant growth of the average term of actual imprisonment may be interpreted as clear evidence of that deficiency.

Collective perceptions and expectations

The reasons underlying the rise of punitiveness of the Spanish criminal justice system may also be approached by looking at collective perceptions and expectations. According to CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas; Sociological Research Centre) monthly surveys, both ‘urban safety’ and ‘terrorism’ had been broadly considered as critical issues by the Spanish population till the beginning of the economic crisis whereas ‘drug-related problems’ tended to rank distinctly lower as a serious public concern throughout the 2000s. ²³ More precisely, ‘urban safety’ was named as one of the three most serious national problems by an average 14.4% of those surveyed from 1993 to 2000, by 16.9% from 2001 to 2008 and by 5.6% from 2009 to 2015. ‘Terrorism’ rated as a key collective concern by an average 32.0% of the surveyed individuals from 1993 to 2000, by 42.2% from 2001 to 2008 and by 5.2% from 2009 to 2015. ‘Drug related problems’, however, were mentioned as one of the three most serious national problems by an average 24.8% of the interviewees from 1993 to 2000, by 8.5% from 2001 to 2008 and by 0.6% from 2008 to 2015.

It was not until the early 2000s that urban safety began gaining traction in political discourse thanks to its rhetorical connection with the remarkable migratory phenomenon of the decade (Zuloaga, 2014). In fact, the overwhelming impact of terrorism prevented urban safety from taking centre stage in the political arena during the first decades of the democratic period (Medina-Ariza, 2006). Nevertheless, the prominence of street crime in the public debate before the onset of the Great Recession was largely facilitated by the interpretation of immigration as a social problem. ²⁴

With regard to this evolution, it has been contested whether the Spanish population might be considered highly punitivist in comparison to other EU countries. While some European surveys ²⁵ apparently support the notion that Spain exhibits elevated levels of subjective punitiveness, Spanish academic literature has claimed that the empirical findings upon which this conclusion is premised are not wholly consistent (Varona, 2009).

In addition, two major historical facts of the period under perusal may clarify the prominent role played by the Spanish criminal justice system in the management of collective anxieties and perceptions of social disorder. On the one hand, we see the extraordinary number of heroin addicts produced by Spanish society in the two decades following Franco's death, that is, up to the mid-1990s. It is estimated that Spain had the highest rate of heroin addicts in the Western world; by the beginning of the 1990s it was estimated to number some 150,000 (Plan Nacional sobre Drogas, 2009), with the vast majority of these individuals involved in criminal activities (Gamella, 1997; Lorenzo Rubio, 2013; Miró Miquel, 2005). ²⁶ On the other hand, throughout the first decade of this century Spain had an extremely significant rate of immigration (CIA World Factbook). More than 5.1 million foreigners (over 4.2 million of whom were non-EU-25 nationals) migrated to Spain between 2000 and 2010, and in specific moments of that period Spain had more than 1 million irregular migrants (Carrasco Carpio, 2008; Pajares, 2010). The penal management of both phenomena contributed to the escalation of the prison population between 1983–1994 (criminalisation of heroin addicts) and 1999–2009 (criminalisation of migrant newcomers) (Brandariz García, 2011; Rodríguez, 2003). ²⁷ Those meaningful experiences of punitive processing of heroin addicts and (irregular) migrants suggest that Spain may well be a case study for testing the theories which indicate the role of the criminal justice system in the management of surplus populations (De Giorgi, 2006; Wacquant, 2009). If we regard unemployment as a distinctive trait of surplus populations, the suitability of the Spanish case is even more apparent: Spain had elevated unemployment rates (over 15%) between 1982 and 1999, and again from 2009 onwards, much higher than those of other EU countries. ²⁸

An enduring Sovereign mode of punishment

This brief review of three key facets of the Spanish criminal justice system demonstrates that this case study permits us to draw a positive correlation between late democratisation and high punitiveness. In effect, the Spanish penal system appears first and foremost to be remarkably severe and punishment-focused, in contrast both to (primarily) welfarist and rehabilitative models and to (primarily) economic-utilitarian and managerial models. In this sense, freely recalling Foucault's (2007) work on punishment and power technologies, we may affirm that the Spanish penal system represents an enduring sovereign model of punishment. ²⁹

The Spanish model of penality appears to be consistent as well with some theoretical frameworks aimed at relating levels of punitiveness with socio-economic and political models, particularly Lappi-Seppälä's account (2011), which is focused on a wide array of European countries. In short, the Spanish case may well substantiate Lappi-Seppälä's thesis, which postulates that low punitiveness is more likely to be found in countries characterised by consensual and corporatist political cultures, elevated levels of social trust and institutional legitimacy (see also Killias, 1986) and strong welfare states (see also Cavadino and Dignan, 2006; Lacey, 2008; Larrauri Pijoan, 2009).

Nevertheless, the punitiveness of a given jurisdiction cannot be construed as a mere effect of certain systems of organising and governing politics, the economy or the social, but primarily as the outcome of contextual and territorialised phenomena (Cheliotis and Xenakis, 2016; Lappi-Seppälä, 2011). Therefore, three additional explanations may be suggested of the punitiveness of the Spanish system as potential fields for further research. Indeed, beyond Lappi-Seppälä's insightful theoretical framework, these three additional traits, which bridge the gap between the authoritarian past and the democratic present, characterise the Spanish sovereign mode of punishment as a distinct expression of ‘post-dictatorial penality’. ³⁰

First, as previously discussed in this paper, the inertias of governmental modes pertaining to the dictatorial period, as a consequence of the absence of a deep democratic rupture, should be taken into account (Jiménez Franco, 2016; Lorenzo Rubio, 2013; Recasens i Brunet, 2007; Varona, 2000; see also Cheliotis and Xenakis, 2016). The distressing lack of accountability of system agencies and the enduring survival of a conservative judicial culture may be read as consequences of these inertias. The striking use of governmental pardon (more than 10,350 pardons were granted by the Spanish government between 1996 and 2013 ³¹ ) stands out as well as evidence of a persistent sovereign model of punishment. ³²

Second, the remarkable severity of the Spanish criminal justice system may be related to the contamination of the system as a whole by the exceptionalist practices (in policing, the judiciary, sentencing) employed for the purposes of fighting terrorism (Lazarus et al., 2013; Paye, 2007; Zedner, 2009). ³³ Among those exceptionalist practices, at least the following points should be mentioned: (a) the passage of anti-terrorism laws, aimed at disproportionately increasing the sentences of terrorism crimes, and at enacting associative crimes – such as belonging to a terrorist organisation or unlawful association – and crimes based on vague and evaluative subjective elements, which require the assessment of the personality of the defendant; (b) the authorisation of incommunicado detention periods, the restriction of the right to a fair trial, the almost automatic enforcement of pre-trial detention, and the legalisation of the denunciation of ‘repentant’ former armed militants; (c) the formation of high-profile and unaccountable police units, and the setting-up of special courts responsible for the judgement of terrorism crimes; (d) the construction of maximum-security correctional facilities, aimed at isolating the inmates convicted of terrorism crimes, and the complete relinquishment of the rehabilitation of the offender as the goal of the prison sentence (Bergalli, 1997; Rivera Beiras, 2003). Moreover, Spain continues to be the EU country with the highest number of inmates convicted of terrorist offences – a criminal phenomenon that has affected Spanish society all throughout the democratic period, ³⁴ and likely the only country which until recently has labelled and criminalised the activity of prominent political parties as terrorism (e.g. Bateragune case ³⁵ ). Although terrorism cases have always been no more than an insignificant component of the Spanish criminal justice system, the corruption of the system due to this penal exceptionalism is particularly apparent in the extension of the maximum term of imprisonment, in the conservative penal culture fostered by the terrorism-fighting court Audiencia Nacional and in the survival of maximum-security prison facilities, which were regarded by the 1979 Penitentiary Act ³⁶ as extraordinary and temporary.

The third point, just as pivotal as the previous ones, albeit more difficult to empirically demonstrate, may be qualified as ‘dromological’, to adopt a term coined by the French cultural theorist Virilio (1986). It relates to the accelerated character of post-dictatorship Spanish history. Spain has had a conspicuously late incorporation into the political and economic processes of democratisation and capitalist modernisation. However, the democratic period initiated a process of historical compression. In effect, all of Europe witnessed extraordinary social, economic, cultural and political transformations during the last 40 years, but these changes were experienced in Spain ‘dromologically’, that is in a most accelerated way (García Delgado and Jiménez, 2001; Jiménez Franco, 2016). A country barely acquainted with welfare had to rapidly shift to a ‘post-welfarist’ social model (Recasens i Brunet, 2007). A country that scarcely experienced Fordism was quickly thrust into a ‘post-fordist’ production model (Jiménez Franco, 2016). The phenomena of controlling surplus population groups (heroin addicts and migrants) may be framed in this context of historical acceleration.

This dromological evolution of the Spanish reality over the last few decades may have cemented a high level of punitiveness. In effect, the thesis which relates fear of crime and increase of punitiveness to a sort of late-modern angst (Bauman, 2006; Garland, 2001) may be most suitable to explain the Spanish context. Moreover, the Spanish penal system may be a good case study for testing Melossi's (1985, 2000, 2001; see also Aviram, 2015) theoretical claim that penal severity works as a primary tool for managing perceptions of disorder and social anxiety in certain historical periods characterised by exceptional transformations.

Coda: Spanish penal policies since the onset of the Great Recession

The end of this historical evolution is the Great Recession. Since it began, the Spanish criminal justice system has encountered something heretofore alien to its development: the scarcity of public resources.

In May 2010, the Great Recession entered its deepest stage in the Eurozone, when grave private indebtedness became public debt (Aglietta and Brand, 2013; Lapavitsas et al., 2012). Perhaps not coincidentally, in May 2010 the Spanish prison population reached its highest peak since the post-Civil War period: 76,951 inmates, equal to a rate of 166 per 100,000 inhabitants. Afterwards, a process unknown since the end of Franco's dictatorship began: a decreasing number of inmates. ³⁷ The Spanish prison population shrank by 19.9% in overall figures from May 2010 to December 2015, dropping to 133 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The why of the contraction process may only be located in the context of the Great Recession. Within this stark process of economic crisis and sharp cuts in public expenditure, the Spanish prison system could not pursue its expansionist phase, and it had to adapt to the scarcity of public resources. However, it is well documented that this new correctional austerity has undermined inmates' rights and degraded prison life conditions (Jiménez Franco, 2015).

By contrast, the how of this contraction of the system can only be hypothesised, due to the absence of complete data. However, it should be highlighted that the decrease in the prison population has primarily affected foreign inmates. ³⁸ This situation appears to be fundamentally consistent with the deportation data, which over the last period show a remarkable increase of deportations based on penal grounds (Fernández Bessa, 2016). ³⁹ Hence, the increased rate of deportations of migrants recently released from prison and/or with a criminal record has been a key tool for reducing the prison population. Furthermore, the recent contraction of the Spanish prison system may be attributed to the reform of the Penal Code (Organic Law no. 5/2010), which took effect in December 2010 (Rodríguez and Larrauri, 2012). The reform scaled down the sentences for a number of drug-trafficking crimes; owing to the salience of these crimes in the prison realm, the reform has undoubtedly contributed to the current contraction of the system (Brandariz García, 2014).

In addition, this process has been accompanied by a significant decline in crime rates. The registered crime rate in 2008 was 51.9 offences per 1000 inhabitants while in 2015, after a steady decline, it stood at 43.7 (Ministerio del Interior, 2014, 2016).

The most pressing issue raised by the current situation is to what extent the Great Recession may have ushered in the opening of a new model of penality, more managerial and less sovereign and ‘post-dictatorial’. The insufficient data currently available only enable a hypothetical answer to the question. Nonetheless, if the cycle of economic recession/stagnation continues, then it is highly unlikely that the Spanish penal system would initiate a new phase of expansionism and inattention to the limits of public resources, which were its key traits after the end of the dictatorship.