The violent Basque separatist group ETA announced a unilateral ceasefire in early September after a year of relative inactivity and significant arrests under continuing France-Spain cooperation. A French gendarme was killed in March near Paris in a shoot-out with suspected ETA members. In January the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that 2006 negotiations between elected Basque officials and Batasuna, the Basque nationalist party declared illegal in 2003 for alleged ties to ETA, did not constitute a crime. Three ETA members were convicted for the December 2006 bombing of a Madrid airport. They will serve a maximum of 4o years in jail each, despite the symbolic 1,000 year sentences.

Spain rejected recommendations from peer governments during its Universal Periodic Review at the HRC in May. The rejected recommendations included the improvement of safeguards for terrorism detainees held without access to communication and the implementation of the 2008 justice reform in terrorism cases recommendations made by the UN special rapporteur on human rights while countering terrorism. The Spanish government similarly rejected recommendations to create an independent police complaints mechanism.

Parliament approved in June an overhaul of Spain's criminal code effective December 2010, increasing sentences for over 30 crimes, creating a new system of post-sentence "supervised liberty" for terrorism and sex offenses, and creating a new crime of disseminating information to "provoke, foment or foster" the commission of a terrorism offense.

Judge Baltasar Garzón, known internationally for his efforts to bring former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to justice, was suspended in May and faced trial for investigating alleged cases of illegal detention and forced disappearances of more than 100,000 people during Spain's civil war and under the subsequent Franco regime, despite a 1977 amnesty law. The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances expressed concern in May over Garzón's suspension and criticized Spain's amnesty law.

Around 200 unaccompanied migrant children, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa and Morocco, remain in "emergency" centers set up in 2006 in the Canary Islands despite repeated pledges by the local government to close them. Around half live in La Esperanza, a substandard, large, isolated former detention facility. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concern in September over inadequate reception conditions and neglect of children in the Canaries. It recommended that Spain establish child-friendly centers and introduce effective complaints mechanisms for children in care to report ill-treatment.

A new law came into force in July removing restrictions on abortion to make it legal on request up to the fourteenth week of pregnancy. It also increased access to, and information about, reproductive rights and family planning. Prior to the reform, abortion was lawful only on the grounds of serious health risks for the woman, fetal malformations, or in rape cases.