Letter to V-DEM about Spain's score in its "Liberal Democracy Index" (7 MAR 2021)

Click , if need be, to read the text of my letter to V-DEM

Dear Sirs,

I would very much like to know where I can view the component indicators (and scoring systems) for each of the component indices, particularly for the first two, (Electoral Democracy Index (EDI) and the Liberal Component Index (LCI) - in which Spain scores extremely high, and which help to put the country in 9th position in the world - with a view to perhaps suggesting some new indicators.

The Catalans, in particular, deeply resent the way the Spanish authorities are brandishing the results of The Economist's index and predictably the LDI as a weapon to accuse them, and others, of manipulating reality,

• We have Catalan political prisoners (that is, imprisoned for their public political activity), political exiles whose adoption of MEP status after winning the European elections was challenged at every step by the Spanish courts and public prosecutor, until a ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU, which they chose to interpret in such a way as to prevent one of them from taking office. 
• We have rap singers in prison or in exile for their songs. 
• We have courts closing cases involving Spanish politicians, because of the affinities of the judges assigned to them. We have Catalan politicians being made to pay for expenses that even the Spanish Ministry of Finance denied having being inucrred. 
• We have the Constitutional court holding up for a year or more urgent requests for the legal protection of these political prisoners' rights, just so they are prevented from appealing to the European Court of Human  Rights. 

All of this undermines democracy of course. Many of us are surprised that in such circumstances Spain has scored so highly.

You can see for yourselves by googling ' España "democracia plena" ' and looking at comments made to The Economist's rating, in which Spain fell from 16th to 22nd place last year, but still remained within the "Full Democracy" segment.

I suppose there is no way on knowing how many of your contributors from Spain are Catalans...

Thank you in advance for your reply as regards the indicators and their scoring system. Presumably this is in one of your publications.

Yours sincerely,

M. Strubell