Unprecedented trial against the Royal House for possible workplace harassment against a worker at the Palacio de la Zarzuela. The employee, cleaner at the service of Queen Emerita Sofia with more than three decades in the position and a physical disability recognized since 2022, has led to the Royal House, to National Heritage and one of her superior for work harassment and violation of several of her fundamental rights.
Manuela (fictional name to protect his identity), began working in Palace at age 19. It now has 55 and has 36 quoted in National Heritage, the public body that guard the public ownership assets affected by the use of the king and the royal family.
Like many other public employees at the service of the Royal House, Manuela's salary pays it heritage, but also receives a gratification from the Zarzuela budget when providing services. In May 2022, a sentence recognized a physical disability of 33%, following chronic tendonitis and arms in the arms after an accident work and several surgical interventions.
This year, Manuela decided to report a situation of continuous harassment by her superior. In their demand, they explain sources known to the case, it states that Heritage and Casa Real have violated fundamental rights included in articles 14, 15 and 24 of the Constitution, which consecrate the equality of the Spaniards, the right to physical and moral integrity and the effective protection of the judges and courts.
The trial was seen for judgment this Friday. In his lawsuit, Manuela claims compensation of 82,931 euros, as indicated in the view of the State's lawyer who has defended in the lawsuit to the Royal House and National Heritage.
In his response to the lawsuit at the trial held on Friday in the Social Court number 51 of Madrid, the lawyer of the Administration denied “all of the facts” that the complaint collects, of which there is no “no concretion”; He defended that “there is no violation of fundamental rights” and that it is “evident” the “lack of legitimation” against the king's house and requested “the full dismissal” of the demand.
In the view, four witnesses were declared at the request of the defendant's defense: a cleaner who currently works in Zarzuela as Manuela, another that retired a couple of years ago and also suffered similar harassment practices, although he did not report them in a court, and two representatives of the UGT unions (which has advised the plaintiff in this process) and CSIF.
On the part of the defendant, they testified, among others, the governor or governor of the Palace for the Queen Emerita, superior of the cleaning manager reported and who remains active to its nearly 70 years; and the delegate of National Heritage in El Pardo, Amaya Herrero.
Daughter of the politician and jurist Miguel Herrero de Miñón, one of the parents of the Spanish Constitution, Herrero occupies that position since 2023 after the retirement of his predecessor, Aníbal de Miguel.
The delegation of heritage in Pardo is the most important of the seven that this body has, for the area where it is located, serving the kings of Spain. In it they worked at the end of 2023 (last exercise of which Heritage has published its accounts) 237 people, 22% of the total workforce of 1,077 employees. Of these, more than 60% work in the Royal Palace of Madrid, in the central services of the agency chaired by Ana de la Cueva, Secretary of State for Economics and support for the company in the Ministry of Economic Affairs with Nadia Calviño (from 2018 to 2021).
“It is disabled”
In the trial held on Friday, in the forty minutes of initiating his view (which was open to the public), the judge expelled from the room a editor of Eldiario.es after the answers to the lawyer's lawyer and the defense of the accused, when he identified himself as a journalist, because “it is a procedure of violation of fundamental rights; it is not a normal procedure,” he explained. He also did it after the plaintiff confirmed to the magistrate that she did not want a press there.
According to the State's lawyer, the lawsuit ensures among other things that the plaintiff's position has not adapted to her physical conditions, as required by regulations when, as in this case, there is a disability recognized by Social Security. In these cases, the prevention services give order to those in charge of communicating the disability that the affected person has, what jobs can be done and which are not.
The lawyer explained that, according to his lawsuit, Manuela “is underestimated” in his functions; And that “neither her manager nor her companions let her provide services in the dependencies of the Royal House” and “specifically”, the Palacio de la Zarzuela.
Manuela, said the State's lawyer, understands its right to an effective judicial protection by having suffered a “substantial modification” of its working conditions. This consisted, as explained by the defender of the defendant cleaning manager, in a mere “change of shift” that Manuela had requested “voluntarily” after a serious discussion with her superior last February.
“It is not true what is said in the demand that the signings are controlled, it is not allowed to sign a certain hours and that it is prevented from making the same signing as the rest of his companions,” said the administration lawyer.
The defendant of the defendant shared a good part of the arguments of her “partner” of the State Advocacy. He denied the “acts constituting harassment” of his defendant who collects the lawsuit, in which, she explained, it is assured that the cleaning of Zarzuela “humble continuously” to her subordinated.
The lawyer pointed out that harassment in the workplace (a very difficult behavior to try) is something “very serious.” The doctrine of the Constitutional Court requires that it be treated situations of work stress “for its repetition over time, their degrading character of the working conditions or the hostility that entails”, and that “have as a result attempt or endanger the labor integrity of the employee.”
That harassment, the defense lawyer added, must be a “systematic” and “prolonged” practice, but in the demand, he said, “there is not a concretion” in this regard. “We understand that it is since 2022,” the year in which the defendant was appointed in charge, said the lawyer.
Along the same lines, the state lawyer insisted on the “lack of concrete dates” in the lawsuit, with episodes that, except for that discussion last February, are narrated with “generic character”, which, he said, introduces “legal insecurity” when “assessing whether there is something prescribed or not prescribed”, or if that supposed harassment can be considered “continued”.
Done “isolated”
Manuela decided to submit that lawsuit after what the State's law and the lawyer of the defendant in fact “isolated”: on February 5, said the lawyer of the administration, “there is an incident in the kennels of the zarzuela.” An altercation between the person in charge and her subordinate, “with a few words, a rise in tone, a loss of forms.” The plaintiff was transferred to her home that day by national heritage services. It ended in the emergency room with an anxiety crisis, they explain sources known to the case.
After a few days, an appointment was held with the Mutual Asepeyo, to which the state lawyer, Manuela “did not attend.” It also opened, as is mandatory in these cases, a harassment protocol by national heritage. “After a series of interviews with different workers who have been able to see or listen to that incident,” the file is “archive” because it is considered “isolated” and “does not have enough gravity to be continuous or to be constitutive of workplace harassment” by that “isolated character,” insisted the state lawyer.
The incident “is investigated by the Royal House, the audience process is given to all its colleagues and it is seen that it is an isolated fact, where the forms were lost,” the defendant's lawyer also presented.
eldiario.es contacted Casa Real and National Heritage, without obtaining an answer.
In his initial allegation, the state lawyer defended that it is “unquestionable” that “the physical limitations of the plaintiff have been respected in her job because” at the same time as she asks for the change of turn, she is granted “, on April 23. He explained that “the majority” of the medical awards made since 2019 were “suitable”; that its limitation is “exclusively of a physical nature, never of a psychosocial nature”; That since July 2023, 18 “continuous”, and another 310 days in 2022, when that inability of 33%was recognized.
The medical casualties, argued by the State's lawyer, “would not have greater significance” if it were not because the facts that the demand “refers to signings, vacations, how the functions develop or not”, and “badly can be considered accredited violation of occupational risks regulations, which depend on direct contact”, if “the service has not been provided”. He pointed out that in the disability process that was resolved in May 2022 “the company was not demanded.” And “there is not a single complaint in the Health and Safety Committee”, or complaints to the Labor Inspection.
Manuela works in the annex to the palace where the Queen Emeritus has lived with her sister Irene de Greece for years, on the mountain of El Pardo, about 10 kilometers from Madrid. “An area of zarzuela that was created in the 70s and that consists of a comfortable distribution: four bedrooms, a living room and bathroom, more than enough for them,” the magazine collected a few months ago Week.
It is part of the large staff of public employees working for Casa Real without depending on it from the administrative or budgetary point of view. However, the institution appears as one of its payers in its working life report, as the State lawyer admitted on Friday, in compliance with the regulations that regulate the price for certain remuneration, bonuses and compensation due to service perceived by public employees in a situation of functional dependence.
The lawyer recalled that in cases such as this Royal House can “freely” from its budgets remuneration accessories to other personnel working in the palace. In the case of the plaintiff it is a personal complement of about 300 euros per month.
The administration lawyer defended that it is a “punctual” remuneration and its employer is another, national heritage, which has fulfilled “the totality” of its obligations in the field of occupational hazards, with an evaluation of the risks of the cleaner's position, the necessary training to the workers in this matter and a protocol of harassment that was activated, without consequences, in that “episode” of “isolated character” of February 5 concrete date ”consisting of the demand.
The trial was initially planned for June. In less than two months the date of the view came out, but a few days before the defendant requested a postponement, so far.