On 20 May, Juan José Guardia, lecturer at the UIC Barcelona Faculty of Law, spoke at the Conference “The Law of Victims of Terrorism Ten Years Later” held at the Faculty of Law of the Universitat de València. The meeting was organised by the Fundación Manuel Broseta, an organisation founded after the assassination by ETA of Manuel Broseta Pont, Professor of Commercial Law, and led by Constitutional Law professor Mariano Vivancos Comes.

The aim of the academic event was to analyse Law 29/2011, of 22 September, on the Recognition and Comprehensive Protection of Victims of Terrorism, after ten years in effect, to discuss possible lines of regulatory reform and development. The conference also focused on the current status of the principles supporting this law, such as memory, dignity, justice and truth, as well as the current controversy over criminalisation of the crime of exaltation or public justification of terrorism.

Guardia specifically participated in a round table discussion, together with Consuelo Ordoñez Fenollar, president of the Victims of Terrorism Collective, with a presentation titled “The Role of Victims in an Advanced Democracy: A Review of Recent Basque and Navarre Legislation”. In his speech, the jurist analysed the Constitutional Court’s rulings on the recognition of acts constituting a crime being reserved to the courts and its compatibility with administrative bodies that recognise harmful acts of criminal origin outside a judicial ruling.