Capital punishment in Spain

The 1978 Spanish Constitution bans capital punishment in Spain. Spain completely abolished capital punishment for all offenses, including during wartime conditions, in October 1995.

The last executions were carried out on September 27, 1975 when five members of ETA and Revolutionary Antifascist Patriotic Front (FRAP) were executed by firing squad for murder following a much-publicised trial in which a number of the convicted (including a pregnant woman) were given clemency by General Francisco Franco, and the sentences of the remaining five, due to the unavailability of executioners versed in the use of the garrote, were carried out by shooting. The garotte had been portrayed as a draconian act by the publicity after its last use in 1974, when Salvador Puig Antich was executed in Barcelona and Heinz Chez in Tarragona.

Capital punishment was common in the Spanish kingdom, and methods used included decapitation (especially for nobility). In 1820 Ferdinand VII replaced all other methods with the garrote, which was used mainly since then, including for the liberal freedom fighter Mariana de Pineda Muñoz and the assassin of six-time Prime Minister of Spain Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. According to a pamphlet published anonymously by Crown Prince Oscar Bernadotte, Spain was the most frequent executioner of the Western world in the early 1800s, followed by his native Sweden. The penalty was abolished by the Second Spanish Republic in 1932 but restored two years later in the midst of social and political turmoil for a few major offences, not including murder.

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