Spanish court: No royal funny business
The men who work for satirical magazine El Jueves, which has a circulation of 70,000, were convicted of insulting the heir to the throne.
The drawing appeared on the magazine’s front page in July when a judge ordered it confiscated from news stands on the grounds that it insulted the Spanish royal family.
The cartoon depicted Crown Prince Felipe having sex with Princess Letizia with a caption alluding to a new govern-ment measure designed to boost Spain’s low birth rate by offering €2,414 to families for each new child born or adopted.
The prince says to the princess: “Do you realise if you get pregnant this’ll be the closest to real work I’ve ever done?”
Manel Fontedevila wrote the caption and Guillermo Torres did the drawing.
They have said they did not mean to offend the royal family, and went into the trial saying they would draw the cartoon again and in fact have penned others since then, poking fun at Spain’s royals.
But the judge said that, while trying to ridicule a government measure, the men “had vilified the crown in the most gratuitous and unnecessary way”.
