Getafe could receive Barça on the first day of the League, on August 13, with the stands of the Coliseum Alfonso Pérez empty. The Supreme Court has endorsed the sanctions against the Madrid club for the incidents that occurred in the promotion match against Tenerife in 2017, which among other punishments included the closure of the stadium during a match. The date for the closure of the field must now be agreed upon in the sentence execution phase.
The Supreme Court has established that the sports and administrative sanctions imposed on Getafe by the Royal Spanish Football Federation and the Government Delegation in Madrid are compatible. The Contentious-Administrative Chamber has issued a ruling in which it considers that both sanctions do not imply a violation of the principle ‘non bis in idem’ (punishing the same act twice) because they obey different legal grounds.
The events occurred on June 24, 2017 during the second leg of the qualifying round for the promotion phase to the First Division between Getafe and Tenerife, at the Coliseum Alfonso Pérez in Getafe. In the 67th minute, several hundred visiting fans sang “in a choral and coordinated way” the chant, referring to the local player Sergio Mora, “Asesino, Asesino”, and “Puta Getafe, Puta Getafe”.
Already in the 95th minute, a smoke canister was ignited where the local Comando Azul are located and “preparations were made to invade the field of play at the end of the game.”
Once the match was over, the local fans invaded the field and prevented the players and the refereeing team from reaching the changing rooms. Then they went to the area where the away fans were to provoke them, who responded by throwing seats. Finally, the Police charged against the visiting fans while the stadium security employees “tried to placate the local fans.”
Due to these events, the Federation’s Competition Committee ordered Getafe to close the stadium for one match, which it later replaced with a fine of 18,000 euros. At the same time, the Government Delegation in Madrid initiated two disciplinary proceedings; one for the deficiencies in the control of permanence and eviction that allowed the invasion after the game, which ended with a fine of 4,000 euros; and another for not preventing the introduction of a smoke canister, a fine of 3,001 euros.
The Supreme Court upholds the appeal of the State lawyer against the ruling of the National Court that found the violation of the non bis in idem principle and annulled the sanction of closing the Getafe stadium decided by the Administrative Court of Sport.
Previously, the Central Contentious-Administrative Court number 9 of Madrid established that said principle had not been violated because, although the facts that gave rise to the sanctions were the same, the legal interests protected were different.
The court explains that “the State Attorney and the court ruling are right in ruling out the infringement of the non bis in idem principle because if the same facts have given rise to various legal consequences, the reason is none other than that the existence of two normative orders that govern sporting events at the same time”.
There are the precepts that deal with public order in the development of these events, which are applied by the Government Delegation and which resulted in two fines for Getafe; as well as the precepts of sports discipline, included in the Disciplinary Code of the Royal Spanish Football Federation and look at the correct development of the matches.
“What happened at the Coliseum Alfonso Pérez can, indeed, be penalized with the fines imposed by the Government Delegation for the real danger posed by the violent acts considered for persons and property and with the sanction imposed by the competent body in matters of sports discipline, due to the intense alteration of the development of the match that originated what happened”, adds the Chamber.
