The Supreme Court has definitively rejected the lawsuit that the businessman and former deputy Marcos de Quinto filed against the writer and journalist Daniel Bernabé for a Twitter thread. A succession of 14 messages in which Bernabé recounted the experiences of “a guy” surnamed “De Quinto” and which, according to the businessman, referred to him in a veiled manner. The Supreme Court has rejected his request for 25,000 euros in compensation, explaining that Bernabé is protected by his freedom of literary creation and that, furthermore, there is no evidence that he was referring to the businessman. It was, according to the judges, “a grotesque story whose protagonist is an atrabiliary, absurd and grotesque character” who was not the former director of Coca-Cola.
The writer and journalist, collaborator in different media outlets, wrote a thread in August 2022 on the social network first message got more than 2,000 retweets in which he told the story “not suitable for sensitive stomachs” of “a guy named De Quinto.” A total of 14 messages in which the character goes through bars, nightclubs, concerts and fairs, gets into fights, altercations and drunkenness until he is scammed into buying a gun.
Marcos de Quinto took action and took Bernabé to court through civil proceedings demanding compensation of 25,000 euros. A lawsuit in which he stated that the writer’s account of 14 tweets referred to him, alleging among other things that there had been a bad relationship between them due to public disagreements for years. Those first two sentences now confirmed by the Supreme Court explained that the story, although the surname coincided, did not refer to Marcos de Quinto.
“They tell a story located in a place and in a context different from that of the date on which they are broadcast, so it is a satire with overtones of manners of Spain in the 70s and 80s starring a person whose connection with “The plaintiff only has the last name “De Quinto”, without any other identifying information that allows him to relate that character to the plaintiff,” said the Provincial Court of Madrid. Marcos de Quinto and Daniel Bernabé, the Court added, did not even know each other in person and some tweets in which the writer referred to the businessman as an “executive-butcher” are not enough to prove that he is the protagonist of the story. “There is no document in which the defendant acknowledges that fact,” the trial courts said.
Some arguments that the Supreme Court now endorses to definitively reject Marcos de Quinto’s claim. Bernabé’s tweets, the sentence first says, were “a literary work, specifically a satire, a grotesque story whose protagonist is a grotesque and caricatured fictional character” who was not the former Ciudadanos deputy. “Although the surname of the protagonist of the story coincides with that of the plaintiff, the circumstances of said character are completely unrelated to the plaintiff,” states the Supreme Court.
From Coca-Cola to a ‘think tank’
Businessman Marcos de Quinto was vice president of Coca-Cola between 2015 and 2017 and president of the company in Spain at the time when an ERE was undertaken, which was finally annulled by the Supreme Court. He made the leap into politics with Ciudadanos in 2019 as the new signing of Albert Rivera, leaving politics just over a year later. Since then his business adventures have been through far-right media such as the failed television channel 7nn or as a shareholder in Estado de Alarma TV, owned by Javier Negre. Two years ago he participated in the launch of the think tank called “Pie en pared” with the objective, he said together with Juan Carlos Girauta, of “combating woke leftism.”
His lawsuit against Bernabé has failed in the Supreme Court, which means that the businessman will also have to pay the costs of the judicial process. The tweets of the journalist and writer, say the judges, constitute “a grotesque and exaggerated story whose protagonist is an atrabiliary, absurd and grotesque character whom he places in the 70s due to numerous references.”
The messages that Bernabé wrote on Twitter “describe traditional scenes from Spain of another era, without relating the actions of their protagonist to scenes or situations currently experienced by the plaintiff.”
In a statement made public this Friday, Daniel Bernabé celebrated the sentence that puts an end to several years of judicial proceedings against him. “We have won again,” he highlights after receiving the third ruling that has proven him right in this case. “It is completely delusional that a High Court has to dedicate itself to these things because a man with a lot of money gets angry,” he lamented, in addition to celebrating that this firm resolution of the Civil Chamber “sets a valuable precedent in the defense of the critical literary creation, especially at a time when the extreme right shamelessly shows its desire for censorship.” “If many people laugh at a fiction that has nothing to do with you, it is because you identify with it. Conclusion: being a lazy person takes its toll.”
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