During the Easter holidays of 2015, an incident that occurred on the Polynesian island of Bora Bora caused a wave of controversy in the Spanish social chronicle. It was then that journalists Diego Arrabal and Gustavo González photographed the presenter Mariló Montero naked, without her consent and using a large telephoto lens. Some events that have reached their conclusion this Thursday.
Arrabal and González have been sentenced by the Provincial Court of Barcelona to ten months in prison for the crime of revealing secrets, in addition to paying a fine of 6 euros per day for the next eight months. A resolution that contrasts with Montero’s original request presented a few weeks ago, for six years in prison and compensation of 265,000 euros. Despite this, the communicator has reacted to the sentence.
In a conversation with El Español, which has had access to the full document, Mariló Montero was “grateful to Justice,” this being “an advance in the defense of the privacy of a public person.” A fact that, according to her, extends to other personalities since “harassment of public figures is known.” The presenter’s legal team also says that this sentence “will mark a before and after” in the monitoring of personalities.
The photographs of Montero followed a controversial media persecution in the Maldives, forcing journalist Carmen Varela’s communications director to choose a private and discreet destination. “Such was his intention to keep the destination of his trip secret that he did not communicate it to his family environment or any of his friends, not even to the person who was going to accompany him and who only became aware of it in the airport itself,” the car indicated.
Mariló and her partner stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel Le Moana, where they “enjoyed long periods on the terrace facing the sea in the security that they were in an area of ??intimacy typical of the place that at that time constituted their temporary home, remaining in the same pajamas, in a bikini and, in the case of Ms. Montero, at some point even taking off her top to sunbathe.”
The images were obtained using a telephoto lens and, according to the document, they could have been taken from a boat or one of the hotel’s bungalows, since “one of them was reserved by the company DIEGUS, S.L, one day before the arrival of the defendant.” DIEGUS was a company owned by Arrabal and González, with which they obtained the photographs before offering them to several magazines such as Lecturas, although its director Luis Pliego rejected them when he understood “that they were not publishable.”
