By ANA MARTINEZ
news@ColumbiaMissourian.com

Until May 3, 2007, not many people in Spain knew about Tasers.

That day, a police officer from the region of Catalonia shot a mentally disturbed man with a handgun. The man had attacked and tried to kill another officer.

The disturbed man died, and the question arose: If the first officer had used a Taser, could the tragedy have been avoided?

Several months after the incident, Amnesty International in Spain released a report stating that 269 people in the United States had been killed after being shot by a Taser between June 2001 and June 2007.

The debate in Spain re-emerged, and some police forces, such as the Mossos d’Esquadra in Catalonia, decided not to use the Tasers they had purchased some months before.

In Spain, there are around 440 Tasers, according to the Internal Affairs Department. Although they are legal for police forces, their use is not extensive.

Neither the national police nor the Guardia Civil, the Spanish military group that carries out police duties among the civilian population, have Tasers among their weapons.

Only the Special Operations Group , created in 1978 within the national police and known in Spain and throughout Europe as one of the more experienced counter-terrorism groups, have two Tasers, both designated as experimental.

Jaume Curbet, political scientist and editor-in-chief of the magazine Seguridad Publica (Public Safety), explains that “in Spain, the use of Taser guns is not regulated. But it is clear among the police forces that the only finality of Taser guns is reducing the risk of mortality. They never should be used neither as a substitute for less aggressive weapons nor in situations of disobedience to the authority.”

Some local police forces have been using Tasers for several years. They are more commonly used in the Canary Islands. Arona, a small city in this region, was the first council town that bought this kind of weapon in 2001.

In Catalonia, local police have them in Valencia, Murcia and Andalucía in the south of the country.

In the region of Madrid, only one town, Moraleja de Enmedio, allows the local police officers to use Tasers. Before using the stun gun, police officers must allow themselves to be shot with one, in order to know the strength and power the weapons have.

The company Andreu Soler has been authorized since 2003 to import Tasers for the Spanish and Andorran security forces. No policeman can buy one in a private capacity. Each one costs around 2,000 euros, or $2,400.

There is no longer a debate about Tasers in Spain. Police forces and authorities seem to agree — until it has been proven the guns cause no harm to victims, they prefer not to use them as a common weapon.