Madrid (EFE) violated their right to privacy.
Cristina Cifuentes resigned on April 25, 2018 as president of the Community of Madrid a few hours after the dissemination of a video recorded in 2011 in a supermarket, when she was caught allegedly stealing some creams, and after several weeks involved in the controversy over the alleged irregularities in obtaining a master’s degree at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, of which she was later acquitted.
In a sentence advanced this Thursday by El Confidencial and to which EFE has had access, the Madrid Court declares that the conduct of the supermarket chain “is constitutive of a violation of the fundamental right of Cristina Cifuentes to her personal privacy, guaranteed in article 18 of the Constitution».
And it condemns Eroski to indemnify the former Madrid president in the amount of 30.00 euros for the damages caused, when a video was made public in which the plaintiff appears in a situation that is considered intimate and personal.
Eroski did not keep the recording as it should
“The defendant (Eroski) did not comply, in the manner that was required of her, the security and custody obligations imposed on her by the regulations governing the protection of personal data with respect to the recording,” says the sentence, which details that This is how “the dissemination of personal data, especially protected, that affects the dignity and deeper hope of the plaintiff’s personality” took place.
This is a sentence of the twentieth section of the Provincial Court of Madrid that upholds in part the appeal filed by the defense of Cifuentes against the sentence of January 2022 of the Court of First Instance number 82 of Majadahonda (Madrid) that dismissed the former president’s claim for violation of her rights, considering that it was a lawful recording in a public establishment and that Eroski’s participation in its dissemination is not accredited.
In this process, the Prosecutor’s Office opposed the appeal of the former regional president.
Cifuentes maintains in this proceeding that his rights to honor, personal and family privacy and his own image were violated as it was recorded on May 4, 2011 with supermarket security cameras and the content of which was published in the press on May 25, 2011. April 2018.
Cifuentes requested compensation of 450,000 euros
It stresses that it is an “intimate and personal situation, and that no one would have known” if Eroski “had adopted the measures to which it was obliged and that were required of it, as the person in charge and responsible for the treatment of the recording”, application of the personal data protection law.
For this reason, it requested that the chain be ordered to compensate it with 450,000 euros for damages and that the sentence be published in two national newspapers, but the magistrates do not agree to the former because they consider that the amount of 30,000 euros compensates the moral damages for the intrusion into their privacy, since the Chamber does not appreciate illegitimate interference in the rights to honor and one’s own image.
The magistrates detail that the economic consequences that could be derived from his decision to resign from office cannot be taken into account, since “the abandonment of said activity was not only motivated by the dissemination of the video, but also by other circumstances and situations ». Nor does it take into account the damage that his direct relatives may have suffered.
Nor does it consider the sentence “adequate or appropriate” that the sentence be published in national newspapers, among other reasons because it does not appreciate in the defendant company “a special intention in it, but to third parties and for political purposes.”