The Ministry of the Interior has decided to dismiss the newly appointed head of the National Police in Lleida, Commissioner Antonio José Royo Subías, after learning that he was convicted in June 2003 by the Provincial Court of Gipuzkoa for harassing a subordinate into having sexual relations with him in exchange for employment benefits and for giving her “a slap on the buttock,” EL PAÍS has confirmed in Interior sources. The dismissal will be published this Tuesday. Royo, 63 years old and who took office on December 9, was considered the perpetrator of a crime of sexual harassment aggravated by asserting superiority, for which he was sentenced to a fine of 1,080 euros and to compensate the victim with 3,000 euros. The sentence did not include any accessory penalty of disqualification (it was incorporated in a 2022 reform of the Penal Code), so the agent continued in the police and was promoted to commissioner in 2017.
The ruling of the Gipuzkoa Court – which was confirmed a year later by the Supreme Court – considered it proven that the police commander, who was then chief inspector in a group of the Police Intervention Unit (UIP, known colloquially as riot police) based in San Sebastián, began to harass, in March 1999, an agent two days after she joined the group. According to the ruling, the command required her “to have sexual relations with him, for this he indicated to her that her incorporation into the group had been with her intervention and that if she agreed to his demands he would ensure that she obtained allowances for trips to other cities, more days of rest, permits, facilities for promotion and otherwise he indicated that she would become his enemy, with what they assumed in the boss-subordinate relationship, of assignment to worse services, etc.”
The sentence continues that the then chief inspector, “both alone and in the company of third parties, made comments of a humiliating nature in relation to her anatomy and her menstruation.” “You have a couple of days left until your period,” he blurted out. According to the magistrates, all of this affected the woman’s relationships with the rest of the members of her unit. The ruling details that during a meal held in Pamplona in which members of the police group participated, the commander “smacked the buttocks” of the victim, who ended up suffering “an adaptive disorder with chronic anxiety,” among other ailments, which required pharmacological treatment and psychotherapy.
It is not the first time that the appointment of Commissioner Royo Subías to a position of responsibility has been surrounded by controversy. During Juan Ignacio Zoido’s time as head of the Interior, in the last stage of Mariano Rajoy’s Government, this command was named the Judicial Police Brigade of the Superior Headquarters of Aragon, to which, among other groups, the Family and Women’s Attention Unit (UFAM), specialized in the fight against gender, domestic and sexual violence, depended. Then, when his criminal record became known, Royo was dismissed by Grande-Marlaska and transferred to another position in the same autonomous community, according to what was revealed at the time. Later, in 2021, the commissioner obtained a position in a Spanish Embassy abroad, one of the most desired destinations within the National Police due to its high financial remuneration. Specifically, it was to Algeria. That appointment then provoked criticism from police unions.
