Justice rejects Rafael Hernando’s lawsuit against ‘Querido Antonio’ ​​for dedicating a chapter to him in a comic

A court has rejected the lawsuit with which Rafael Hernando, PP deputy in Congress, demanded 30,000 euros from Alberto González, author of ‘All the sons of bitches in the world’, for drawing him in his comic talking to Mariano Rajoy about consuming cocaine , covering up crimes by ministers or taking drugs to prolong sexual relations. The judges of the Madrid Court reject Hernando’s appeal and confirm that the book is “a political criticism carried out through a satirical story loaded with irony,” not a real story that violated his honor.

‘All the sons of bitches in the world’ was published in 2016 in ¡Caramba! / Astiberri by Alberto González Vázquez, scriptwriter and director who, under the nickname “Querido Antonio”, among other things, is in charge of the satirical and manipulated videos of El Intermedio. In that comic, González represented Spanish politicians such as Esperanza Aguirre in a straitjacket, Pablo Iglesias trying to reason with Mariano Rajoy, Albert Rivera involved in a murder or Ana Botella dying while having relations with José María Aznar. The work compiled pages previously published, in this case, in Orgullo y Satisfaction, the magazine created by cartoonists from El Jueves after the censorship of a cover with a joke about the king’s abdication.

One of the chapters is titled ‘Cocaine’ and stars Rafael Hernando, then spokesperson for the PP in the Congress of Deputies, and Mariano Rajoy, then President of the Government. Sitting at a table, Hernando is shocked when Rajoy asks him if he uses cocaine, but it takes him a few vignettes to start giving him advice on what drugs to take to “prolong your sexual relations for hours.”

The fictitious conversation leads to explanations of how he managed to cover up the fact that Cristóbal Montoro had killed a family with the car and cover it all up by building an airport at the scene of the incident. The chapter ends when, after offering various drugs to Rajoy, Hernando tries to expel “four eggs” of cocaine from his body while lowering his pants and squatting.

The then parliamentary spokesperson for Rajoy’s PP and today deputy for Almería took the author of ‘All the sons of bitches in the world’ and the publisher to court, demanding compensation of 30,000 euros and the seizure of the book: that it be immediately removed from the bookstores. A court rejected his claims two years ago and now it has been the Provincial Court of Madrid that has endorsed that the work of ‘Querido Antonio’ ​​is protected by freedom of expression.

“Sarcastic and ironic narrative”

For the Court, in a ruling from the civil jurisdiction that can be appealed to the Supreme Court in cassation, the entire chapter was “a clear example of sarcastic and ironic narrative in the form of a comic, an exercise in political satire” and not an attempt to convince the people that Rafael Hernando consumes drugs and covers up murders with public works. Because one of Hernando’s complaints was that, precisely, the book attributed to him crimes of drug trafficking, cover-up, omission of the duty to prosecute crimes, bribery, embezzlement and influence peddling.

“This Chamber sees in it nothing more than a political criticism of the protagonists carried out through a satirical story full of irony that was set up on a stage so hyperbolic that only for this reason could its reader seriously doubt its reality and credibility,” explains the Madrid Court. The author did not seek to “communicate concrete and truthful information” but rather to provoke laughter. “Whether he achieved it could be a matter of taste or opinions,” they add.

The ruling rejects Hernando’s arguments, although it exempts him from paying the costs of the process, and confirms what a Madrid court said at the end of 2022 when dismissing his claim in the first instance. Hernando was, at that time, “a political position with public projection”, his real image was not used and those cartoons “were based on an interview he gave to a newspaper in 1987 in which he admitted to having consumed hashish, although he denied that “I would have tried cocaine, recognizing that I had friends who had.”