The Supreme Court has upheld the sanction of a Civil Guard agent who worked at the La Moncloa gym, where he got drunk while on duty and ended up showing his ass to the chief bodyguard of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. He was punished with 20 days of suspension of employment and salary for “conduct seriously contrary to the dignity” of Benemérita, according to a sentence to which EL PAÍS has had access.
It all happened on April 1, 2022. The agent, who was in charge of guarding the gym of the Security Department of the Presidency of the Government, had an afternoon shift. Before going to work, he ate “some skewers with two beers” in the cafeteria. While he was at work, two colleagues arrived with “a bottle of gin”, which the three of them drank with some Coca-Cola. Thus, the civil guard “not only allowed the introduction and consumption of alcohol in said gym, but also participated in said consumption,” the court emphasizes. Four hours later, around 7:15 p.m., two other uniformed officers arrived, including Sánchez’s then-chief bodyguard. By then, the sanctioned person already had clear symptoms of “having consumed excessively alcoholic beverages.” In fact, without the sentence describing any trigger, the agent “dropped his pants and showed his ass, while dancing and squatting.”
Months later, on October 3, he was sanctioned with the loss of 20 working days with suspension of duties as the author of “a serious offense consisting of the observance of conduct seriously contrary to the dignity of the Civil Guard.” The uniformed man unsuccessfully appealed through administrative and judicial channels until reaching the Supreme Court, which has also rejected his claims.
The magistrates, in a ruling presented by the president of the Military Chamber, Jacobo Barja de Quiroga, reject the civil guard’s appeal because the Central Military Court “had sufficient evidence” to ratify the administrative sanction. “There are several, quite a few, witness statements according to which the appellant here was showing symptoms of drunkenness, with a strong smell of alcohol, with a pasty voice, incoherent sentences, dancing and lowering his pants for a few seconds in a squat position, showing his ass,” the Supreme Court describes in detail.
The agent alleged that the evidence had been evaluated “arbitrarily” but without explaining “how the evaluation goes against the rules of logic or the maxims of experience.” The magistrates complain that “the only thing” he does in his appeal is “pick out certain statements, ignoring other passages from the testimonies.” In his opinion, there is no doubt that, “from the existing body of evidence, the conclusion reached by the trial court is rational.”
The uniformed man also argued that his behavior could not be considered “conduct seriously contrary to the dignity of the Civil Guard” because it had not had “a projection outside the scope of the institution.” In this sense, he reasoned that, since “all those present were members of public order forces,” “it cannot be considered that the behavior has affected the public image of the Civil Guard.” The Supreme Court dismisses it outright because it remembers that among the witnesses there were not only members of the Benemérita, but also of the National Police, a body different from the Armed Institute, and, in any case, “part of society.”
Finally, he argued that the sanction was not proportional. The Supreme Court responds by endorsing the words of the Central Military Court, which ruled that the “intentionality” of the agent and “the circumstance that he was on duty in the gym under the influence of alcohol, contravening the rules and instructions that he himself had to monitor for compliance,” “represented a serious disruption of the service and, with it, the normal functioning of the administration.” Secondly, he indicated that the conduct was “incorrect and disrespectful to the personnel present” and “unworthy of a civil guard.” In addition, he pointed out that, when imposing the sanction, the authorities took into account “the rewards and congratulations noted in the service record” of the agent and “the absence of criminal and disciplinary sanctions.” For all this, he considered that he was “deserving” of the punishment. And he warned that he could have risked a suspension of employment of one to three months with loss of employment.
