Resumen
The work, carried out voluntarily by 8 organizations and 30 health experts from all over Spain, studied 45 cases of torture allegations in the Basque Country from 1982 to 2012. The sample covers a wide spectrum of society, from members of ETA, activists of different types, or people who do not carry out political activities. Of the studied cases, 50% were detentions by the Guardia Civil, 30% by the national police and 15% by the Ertzaintza, and all of them showed sufficient reliability to be true (50% very high reliability, 25% high reliability and the remaining 25% sufficient reliability).
The aim of this study is not to provide data on how widespread torture may be in Spain, but the use of scientific tools for the detection of cases of torture. In fact, the work has scientifically demonstrated that torture does take place in Spain. It is therefore, in the words of the International Rehabilitation of Torture Victims (IRCT), an important contribution to the fight against the denial of torture and its impunity.