The Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community has rejected the appeal presented by one of the sons of Ensign Antonio Luis Baena Tocón against a ruling that allowed the publication of a research article which alluded to the participation of the lieutenant as judicial secretary in the investigation of the judicial process that sentenced the poet Miguel Hernández to death.
Specifically, Baena Tocón’s son appealed the ruling handed down in September 2021 by the Court of Alicante, which allowed the publication of the article titled ‘The case of Diego San José and the Humourist Judge ‘, the work of the Professor of Literature at the University of Alicante (UA) Juan Antonio Ríos Carratalá, as indicated by the academic institution in a statement.
Baena Tocón’s relatives demanded the removal of the article based on the data protection law and the so-called right to digital oblivion to erase references to their father. However, as stated in the 2021 ruling, they could not “ask a public university to exercise a kind of prior censorship on the scientific production of its teaching staff, because this would mean reviving the forms of censorship prior to the approval of the Constitution itself.”
From both the author and the University of Alicante, the ruling has been “very well received” and they have welcomed “the reaffirmation of the right to freedom of information, expression and historical research.” Furthermore, they have claimed the “essential role” of historical research and documentary sources which, on the other hand, are for public consultation.
