07/21/2007
Spain's attorney general on Saturday defended a judge's decision to impound a magazine with a front-page cartoon depicting the crown prince having sex with his wife, rejecting criticism it trampled on freedom of expression.
Candido Conde Pumpido said the vignette in the satirical weekly El Jueves "clearly incurred in a crime."
Insulting the royal family in Spain is punishable with up to two years in jail.
The magazine, published Wednesday and with a circulation of 70,000, pictured the royal couple in an explicit sexual position. It alluded to a measure instituted by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to boost Spain's low birth rate by offering euro2,500 (US$3,450) to Spanish families for each new child born or adopted.
In the cartoon, Prince Felipe tells his wife, Princess Letizia: "Do you realize if you get pregnant this'll be the closest to real work I've ever done?"
Judge Juan del Olmo, who ordered the magazine impounded, wrote that the cartoon was "a clearly denigrating act which is objectively defamatory." He also required the magazine's publishers to give him the names of the cartoonists who could have libeled the head of state or his descendants.
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