The Supreme Court orders Irene Montero to pay 5,400 euros for interest and costs to María Sevilla's ex-husband

The acting Minister of Equality has only paid compensation of 18,000 euros for violating her right to honor

The Supreme Court (TS) has ordered the acting Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, to pay 5,400 euros in late payment interest and procedural costs to Rafael Marcos, former partner of María Sevilla - the former president of Free Childhood convicted of child abduction. minors for making his son disappear in 2017 and not handing him over to his father by court order--, for violating his right to honor.

This Wednesday, the magistrates issued an order to execute the sentence after Montero paid the 18,000 euros in compensation set by the court for presenting Marcos as an "abuser."

The head of Equality paid said amount after it became known that Marcos' defense had presented a demand for execution of the sentence to the high court to demand that Montero comply with the sentence for which he was forced to compensate him for presenting him as an "abuser."

Now, the Supreme Court requires the minister to pay the interest and procedural costs. In addition, she has given him a period of 20 days to publish on his 'X' account - a social network formerly known as Twitter - the heading and the ruling of the sentence.

The court has set the same deadline for the acting minister to delete the tweet she published on May 25, 2022 in which she shared the video of the speech in which they made the "harmful statements" against Marcos.

According to the ruling, reported by Europa Press, the State Attorney's Office - representing Montero - asked the Supreme Court to suspend the execution of the ruling since it had presented an appeal for protection to the Constitutional Court. The Prosecutor's Office, for its part, requested that the order of execution of the sentence be issued.

This Wednesday's resolution takes place after the former couple from Seville presented a brief to the court a few weeks ago to demand that Montero be forced to comply with the sentence that condemned her for violating her right to honor.

It was last June when the Civil Chamber partially upheld his claim and sentenced the Podemos leader to pay 18,000 euros - instead of the 85,000 that he claimed -. The magistrates also sentenced the minister to delete the tweet in question and to publish the heading and ruling of the sentence on her social network and in a national newspaper.

Marcos sued Montero for the words he spoke on May 25, 2022 during the inauguration of the new headquarters of the Women's Institute, and their dissemination on Twitter. That day, after the pardon granted to Seville was made public, the Minister of Equality pointed out that the State had "a debt" to "the protective mothers" and that it should "be capable of protecting" these women who "protect themselves at themselves and their children from sexist violence.

Sevilla's ex-husband claimed in his lawsuit that in this context the minister "presented" him as an "abuser of both his son and his ex-partner", alleging that in doing so he had violated his right to honor.

CONVICTED FOR VIOLATING HER HONOR

The Supreme Court agreed with him, remembering that "honor is a fundamental right that protects against attacks on personal reputation, which is affected when conduct deserving of the maximum social reproach is attributed to a person."

The high court noted that, "in the conflict between the fundamental right to freedom of expression and the right to honor," "it violates personal reputation to unfoundedly attribute to a person the status of abuser."

In this sense, he explained that, although freedom of expression "protects opinions or subjective judgments that, as such, are outside of factual demonstration, this does not mean that it should not have facts that serve as a basis."

Furthermore, the Supreme Court emphasized that in this case there was "no judicial resolution" that would allow it to be concluded that the plaintiff was "the author of episodes of gender or domestic violence, nor the author of sexual abuse of his son," for which "the attribution of facts of that nature lacks any objective factual basis."

"The expressions being judged are not generic, but from the context and their literality it can be deduced that an allusion is made to the plaintiff and that acts constituting sexist violence are attributed to him," the court noted.

In this sense, he specified that "the stated reason for the partial pardon of the plaintiff's ex-partner is that she is a protective mother who defends her son from sexist violence, which is why episodes of such violence are attributed to the plaintiff."

However, the Supreme Court stressed that the pardon came from the crime of child abduction committed by Seville, "with no externalized connection with gender violence, alleging generic reasons of 'justice and equity'."