Under Suspicion: The Impact of Discriminatory Policing in Spain

Spain is a diverse country, but police disproportionately stop and search people based on their racial, ethnic, or religious appearance. Research shows that ethnic profiling has a profound and long-term impact on individuals‘ sense of belonging. 

This video, produced by Rights International Spain and the Open Society Foundations, explores the lived realities of racialized individuals in Spain, who experience discrimination despite the fact that the Spanish Constitution upholds freedom, justice, equality, and political pluralism “as highest values of its legal system.” It features voices of people who know the pain of being singled out because of who they are—and of police officers who want things to change.

This video was launched jointly with the 2019 report Under Suspicion: The Impact of Discriminatory Policing in Spain, which describes the human impact of ethnic profiling in Spain through the stories and experiences of people for whom being stopped and searched by police because of the way they look is part of their everyday life.