Guardia Civil officer faces prison for complaining about the “foul smell” of a superior

A female officer from the Guardia Civil faces six months in prison for complaining about the “foul smell” of one of her superiors.

The Supreme Court has sentenced an officer from the Guardia Civil in Chipiona (Cadiz) to six and a half months in prison and ordered her to pay 300 euros for insulting one of her superiors. She had written a letter stating that he was “not very clean” and gave off a “foul smell”.

“Every time he has appeared as an instructor, he looked scruffy and unclean, with a bad odour and a rather unpleasant smell of sweat under both arms,” said the officer in the letter. For writing about her superior in such a way, the second territorial military court in Seville ruled that she was guilty of committing the offence of insulting a superior and sentenced her to six and a half months in prison, suspended her from public office and ordered her to pay 300 euros to offended superior. The sentence was confirmed by the Military Chamber of the Supreme Court, which also rejected the officer’s appeal.

The incidents occurred in 2017, when the agent, stationed in Chipiona and in charge of the area of gender violence, was ordered to act to reduce the risk to a young woman who had reported death threats and aggressions from her partner. The officer refused. The man, who was arrested, also threatened the officer and caused damage to her vehicle, and she then asked her superiors to activate the protocol of protection for Guardia Civil agents. From that moment on, the accused was summoned “against her will” for assessment by the police medical services which, “despite her opposition”, ordered her to take sick leave for work-related stress. The officer was against all such medical orders and claims to have suffered a situation of “harassment” in the form of the disciplinary proceedings taken against her for “very serious misconduct” for her refusal to undergo medical examinations.

She responded by writing the letter to the commander, who “felt that his honour and dignity had been attacked”, especially as “an unspecified number of people, including subordinates and chiefs of the Cadiz Command” had had access to the letter.

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