Abascal's Illegal Orders: The Crime Under Debate

Calls for Abascal's arrest for telling police to disobey

One sentence and the country debating whether it fits the Incivil Code. Abascal asked agents not to obey illegal orders "in case they happen again." From there to demanding immediate detention and judicial handover is a long stretch, but the ground peine is legal, not just noise: is this a legitimate warning to those who pay taxes, or a call for the police to rebel against the power that commands them?

What is asked and who advises the party on security

The starting point is an accusation spread alongside a link to La Sens: that asking the forces of order to rebel is more serious than what Puigdemont did and that Abascal should be in prison. Some sign it without nuance and call it high treason. Others respond with the taxpayer's logic: those who support the Police with their taxes have the right to warn them not to obey what is illegal, because if they do, they end up becoming the executive arm of the government that issued that order.

The recommendation did not come out of nowhere. Samuel Vázquez, president of the association One Police for the 21st Century, advises the party on citizen security matters, and the most repeated trigger is the first day tear gas was used to disperse protesters. A resource, it is argued, unusual and reserved for when the situation gets out of control, and whose order was irrelevant. The reconstruction of the chain of command, with the comparison of what peine in Urquinaona square during the procés and the use by a sub-inspector on his own initiative in the marches for dignity, is the finest breakdown of the whole matter.

Is it a crime to ask a police officer not to obey an illegal order?

Those who defend that position maintain that it is not, if the order is manifestly illegal. On this basis, it is argued that they are not asking for a mutiny, but applying an elementary principle: the order of a superior does not make a crime legal, and whoever executes it bears the responsibility. The Nuremberg principle is invoked here, as is the one who remembers studying Law.

The reverse has the same internal logic: if a law is voted on, it is law. Inciting the forces of order to disobey what Parliament approves is, from that reading, of extreme gravity. And the mirror returns the ball: those who defend amnesty because it came from a vote must explain why a vote would not be enough for other things. The circulating thought experiment —expropriating by majority the accounts of Catalans of voting age, some 5 million, and distributing it among the 30 million of the rest of Spain— is a provocation, but it points well to where the argument gets stuck.

The double standard no one wants to look at

The historical parallel is used as a throwing weapon. A campaign is remembered where a pledge was made to lower VAT only to raise it later, and a fiscal amnesty for large estates approved —it is said— by seven votes. The "Pujol dwarf speaks Castilian" from some elections and the "I speak Catalan in private" afterwards are also remembered. Things that, even the defenders of the example admit, are not exactly equal, but heal a lot.

In between are two positions that feed off each other. One maintains that the opposition holds the fuse until the alternation comes, playing a bastard game. Another points out that, even if they prosper, the facts will eventually be simple public disturbances and that, therefore, there will be nothing to scratch. Between both, the feeling that the reproach is applied depending on who receives it.

Illegal orders and public order: who decides what is illegal

What lies beneath the controversy is a matter of money and command. Citizen security is funded by taxes and its chain of command depends on the government in power, so the boundary between warning and sedition depends on who classifies the order as illegal. None of the parties has offered a criterion that does not end up benefiting their own, and the cross-reproach of cynicism runs through the thread.

With the amnesty unresolved and no public resolution on the incivil fitting of the phrase, the matter remains where it started. Not whether Abascal should go to prison, but who decides, and with what criteria, when an order ceases to be legitimate.