Spanish sex cartoon 'insulted royalty'

Two cartoonists who drew Spain’s crown prince having sex with his wife and joking it was the closest thing to real work he had ever done were each fined €2,800 today.

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 newsstands 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 government measure designed to boost Spain’s low birth rate by offering €2,400 to families for each new child born or adopted.

The prince says to the princess: “Do you realize 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 two men “had vilified the crown in the most gratuitous and unnecessary way.”