OTEGI MONDRAGON v. SPAIN JUDGMENT 17 (ii) Application of these principles 51. The Court notes at the outset that the applicant was undeniably speaking in his capacity as an elected representative and spokesperson for a parliamentary group, so that his comments were a form of political expression (see Mamère, cited above, § 20). Furthermore, the applicant’s remarks concerned an issue of public interest in the Basque Country, namely the welcome extended by the Head of the government of the Basque Country to the King of Spain during the latter’s official visit to the Basque Country on 26 February 2003, against the background of the closure of the Basque-language newspaper Euskaldunon Egunkaria and the detention of its senior management a few days previously, and of the latter’s public allegations of ill-treatment. The applicant’s statements were therefore made in the context of a debate on matters of public interest. Accordingly, the margin of appreciation available to the authorities in establishing the “necessity” of the penalty imposed on the applicant was particularly narrow (see, mutatis mutandis, Mamère, cited above, § 20). 52. The Court must now examine the reasons leading to the impugned decisions by the domestic courts, in order to determine whether they were relevant and sufficient to justify the applicant’s conviction on the basis of the legitimate aim referred to, namely the protection of the reputation of the King of Spain. The Supreme Court, in overturning the applicant’s acquittal by the Basque Country High Court of Justice, sentenced him to one year’s imprisonment for serious insult against the King. It considered that the impugned remarks had directly targeted the King in person and the institution he embodied and that they had overstepped the limits of permissible criticism. 53. As regards the terms in which the applicant expressed himself, the domestic courts found them to have been ignominious, vexatious and derogatory in so far as they accused the Head of State of “one of the most serious manifestations of criminal conduct in a State governed by the rule of law”, namely torture (“in charge of the torturers”, “who defends torture” and “[who] imposes his monarchical regime on our people through torture and violence”). The Court points out in that regard that a distinction needs to be made between statements of fact and value judgments. While the existence of facts can be demonstrated, the truth of value judgments is not susceptible of proof. The requirement to prove the truth of a value judgment is impossible to fulfil and infringes freedom of opinion itself, which is a fundamental part of the right secured by Article 10. The classification of a statement as a fact or as a value judgment is a matter which in the first place falls within the margin of appreciation of the national authorities, in particular the domestic courts. However, even where a statement amounts to a value judgment, there must exist a sufficient factual basis to support it, failing which it will be excessive (see, for example, Lindon, Otchakovsky-Laurens and July, cited above, § 55). Furthermore, the