Right wing party allowed to use Spanish flag on envelopes

ON TUESDAY December 15 the Spanish Supreme Court ordered the Spanish Post Office to send out 900,000 campaign leaflets from right wing minority party Vox which the post office had withheld on the grounds that the party had used a Spanish flag on their envelope.

This follows a decision made on November 9 by the Central Electoral Commission when it ruled the material should not be sent out because it was in contravention of a clause in Spain’s 1981 electoral law prohibiting “the use of the Spanish flag in any symbols or logos of political parties, trade unions, associations or private entities”.

However following an appeal by Vox, the court ordered “the authorisation of the distribution of the electoral propaganda mailings of the appealing political party” and told the post office to “send out the electoral propaganda delivered by Vox with the maximum urgency”.

The ruling confirmed that the Spanish flag could not be used in political party logos but its use on other campaign events was permitted.

In a press statement, Vox called the ruling “historic” and said that “in 37 years of democracy, circumstances had not occurred in which the Supreme Court had had to act in the middle of an election campaign due to the criminal arbitrariness of the Central Electoral Commission”.