Written by Katie Llanos-Small

Katie Llanos-Small is the founding editor of foreign-correspondence.com. She graduated from the University of Auckland (New Zealand) in 2005, with a degree in Political Studies and Latin American Studies. She also studied Chinese (Mandarin) and Arabic at university. Recently Katie spent a year studying advanced Spanish and teaching English in Madrid. Currently she is studying towards a Graduate Diploma of Journalism from the Auckland University of Technology. Her main areas of interest include global migration and refugee issues and the politics of underdevelopment.

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Law and Opinion

By Katie Llanos-Small, July 27th, 2007

A while ago in Spanish class we got chatting with the teacher about Spanish attitudes towards the Royal Family. Some students remarked on the overwhelmingly positive coverage of the monarchs in gossip rags: the press gushes over them in a way completely foreign to the snarky tabloids in Britain, for example. Our teacher explained that it was in line with Spanish attitudes: that the public loves the royals and just wouldn’t tolerate criticism of them.A censored version of the magazine cover

More specifically, as it turns out, it’s the police who won’t tolerate criticism – or even mickey-taking – of them. Recently a judge ordered all copies of the weekly satirical magazine El Jueves to be seized by police. The issue featured a tasteful cartoon of the Prince and Princess engaging in an act generally glossed over in fairy tales, with the Prince remarking that, due to a new initiative to pay couples to have children, if the Princess got pregnant, then this would be the closest he’d ever come to actually doing work.

Not even really that funny. Not even really that much of a critique of the Royals. And it seems pretty surprising that in a country that defends freedom of speech in its constitution, the police would uphold an antiquated law against this principle. Because it wasn’t the palace that complained – the authorities took the action all on their own. As metabunker says, it’s disappointing that the police took such drastic action contrary to principles of freedom of speech – and the main outcome they have achieved my doing so is to give the magazine massive publicity.

The case makes me wonder about the formation of public opinion. If my Spanish teacher – an intelligent and plugged-in woman – was unaware of the strictness of laws governing reporting and commenting on the royal family, then how many others also believe that the royals are untouchable because that’s what public opinion dictates? That the media don’t criticise the royals because otherwise the magazines wouldn’t sell? What really comes first: public opinion, or media opinion?

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