Torrevieja will pay 115,000 euros to the police officer who reported workplace harassment

The Constitutional Court upheld the ruling that the Torrevieja City Council must pay a local police officer 115,000 euros for the workplace harassment he suffered. The officer pointed to the public officials in charge of the Local Police for not doing anything about it.

The High Court of Justice and the Supreme Court both ruled in favour of the City Council. Federico Alarcón, the councillor secretary of the local government board, finally said on Monday, November 17th, that the affected official will have to be paid 95,000 euros plus 20,000 euros in late payment interest since 2016.

Duty

The Constitutional Court’s decision, which was the first of its kind in cases of workplace harassment in the public administration and went against previous decisions by the Supreme Court and the Valencian High Court, had effects across the country. The Constitutional Court said that the City Council, specifically the mayor at the time of the events, Eduardo Dolón, and the current delegate of the Valencian Government in the province, Agustina Esteve, who was then the Councillor for Security, were directly responsible for not stopping the officer’s harassment by his superiors.

The verdict said that the public authority’s behaviour was “an omission in preventing, investigating, and punishing the acts of harassment by its public employees and the harassment that it developed institutionally against the plaintiff.”

Eight years ago, the case started. The officer had to leave his job with the Torrevieja Local Police to take another one. He sued the City Council in Elche through administrative litigation and won.

The City Council then took the case to the High Court of Justice of the Valencian Community and won, which changed the prior decision. The aggrieved person appealed to the Supreme Court, which turned down his appeal. However, he took the matter to Spain’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, and—against all odds—the High Court ruled in his favour.

Last February, the First Chamber of the Constitutional Court (TC) upheld an appeal for the protection of fundamental rights filed by a local police officer. The City Council was ordered to pay the officer 95,816 euros, plus interest for late payment since 2016, for failing to investigate and harassing him. This is the decision.

The phrase

The Constitutional Court said that the officer’s shifts were changed without notice, he was denied vacation time, he had to work shifts without the required rest periods, his service weapon was taken away, and the Traffic Department was even told that he might have lost his ability to drive. He also lost his bonus and other benefits, and letters that humiliated him were made public. His children’s school subsidies were also taken away.

Several witnesses say that he was constantly treated badly in public, and certain cops and police officers at headquarters insulted him virtually every day in front of everyone. The ruling also said that those in charge did not fix the problem.

In May, the City Council said it would appeal the ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union. It hasn’t done so yet, but it might still. It will be paid compensation to avoid more late payment interest.

It takes about two years for this European Union court to settle cases. There are two chambers: one for civil cases and another for criminal cases. With this step, the PP government made sure they could publicly discuss this issue until 2027, the year of the municipal elections. But there is a lot of ambiguity about the appeal to the European Court of Justice against the Constitutional Court’s decision.

Antonio Rico, the policeman who was paid, tells tsaid that “not even double that amount is enough to pay for the damage they have caused me both professionally and personally. I have to continue to this day under the protection of the Anti-Fraud Agency and have been condemned to a lifetime of stigmatisation for doing the right thing, applying the law equally to everyone.”

He also says, “It’s sad that the people of Torrevieja have to pay for this and other sentences that add up to more than 200,000 euros for cases of workplace harassment. Instead of demanding payment from those responsible, as the law allows, the City Council would rather that the people of Torrevieja face these penalties.”

He warns that Esteve and Mayor Dolón are among those who have been singled out with “a firm judicial conviction where ethics in public service have been damaged,” even though “this is not limited to strict legality (where there is no automatic disqualification for administrative omission), but to principles such as integrity and public trust.” He adds that “it is disheartening for those who report irregularities to see that while we have to suffer harassment and try to flee (in the best of cases), they continue as if nothing had happened in their positions.”

In this regard, he remembers that “they had a duty to act against mobbing,” especially in his case, where there were allegations of corruption: “Their failure to act only made the damage worse, rewarding inaction in the face of irregularities, which could undermine the government’s legitimacy.”

He thinks that the City Council wasted a chance this Monday, after the local government board’s news conference about the compensation, to “apologise to all the harassed officers and say that it won’t happen again.”

Finally, he commended “the brave colleagues” who stood by him and “also suffered workplace repercussions.” The punishment shows that “no one is above the law, no matter how much uniform, rank, or political position they hold.” After the Constitutional Court upheld the ruling, the Torrevieja City Council will pay a local police officer 115,000 euros. The officer said that the public officials in charge of the Local Police did not do anything about the harassment at work that he had to deal with.