A WOMAN has been fined €800 under Spain's new 'Public Safety Law' for posting a photo of a police patrol car illegally parked on Facebook.
She had caught the vehicle on camera in a disabled bay and uploaded it onto her site, captioned with “You can park wherever you [expletive] like and you won't even get fined.”
It took just two days for the Local Police in her home town of Petrer (Alicante province) to find her from her Facebook site and slap a fine notice on her under what has been dubbed the 'gagging law' due to its severe restrictions on public behaviour.
Using photographs of police officers in the course of duty which 'could endanger their or their families' safety' or interfere with their work is subject to fines ranging from €600 to €30,000, which is why the woman – who has not been named – had to pay up.
According to a Local Police spokesman, Fernando Portillo, the officer in question had left his patrol car in a disabled parking space because he and his colleague had been called out because of a 'vandalism incident' in a park close by.
They needed to leave their car as near as possible to the crime scene to enable them to catch the culprits in the act, said Portillo, and adds that police have the legal right to park wherever they need to in an emergency, even if this is not a legal space.
Despite the law only applying a fine if the photo taken, and its subsequent use 'puts the officer in danger', Portillo said this could rightly be inferred because the Facebook user in question had 'attacked the good name of' the force and the two policemen.
He said he 'would have liked to have seen a different outcome' to the situation, but that the officers in question 'are legally entitled to' issue a fine.
Insulting an authority figure on one's own Facebook or Twitter site can also carry financial penalties – a woman recently called the mayor of her town a 'brazen scoundrel' on Facebook and was fined for doing so.
Throwaway comments of varying severity wishing violence or death on unpopular politicians on Twitter and Facebook have also landed users in trouble with the police – including a 21-year-old man from the province of Valencia who praised the women who murdered the MP for the PP in León, Isabel Carrasco.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com