Leading chefs in Majorca have reacted with astonishment to the decision of a Palma judge that a chef should pay 6,000 euros compensation because of a response made to a customer on TripAdvisor.
Macarena de Castro of the Restaurant Jardín in Puerto Alcudia, one of the nine Michelin-starred restaurants in Majorca, has been ordered to pay this amount by Judge Orestes Muñoz because of the way in which she replied to criticism. Her fellow chefs consider the penalty to be disproportionate and excessive. Among the reactions is that of Miquel Calent: "TripAdvisor merits no respect. The customer is always right and the website doesn't ask for evidence from those who complain."
Marc Fosh, a contributor to the Bulletin, says: "It's strange that everyone is free to have an opinion but not Maca. What happened was something out of the ordinary, so Maca was right to reply. It's very unfortunate that people can behave this way."
Alfonso Robledo, the president of the Majorca restaurants' association, believes that a 6,000 euro fine is outrageous. "I can't make head nor tail of it."
In 2015, a response by Castro went viral on social networks. Criticism from a customer, which said, among other things, that the restaurant was a rip-off, was met with a response which referred - again among other things - to customers who preferred to drink rather than eat and to the embarrassment caused when the woman fell asleep on the sofa by the restaurant's entrance.
The judge's ruling said that Castro had violated the complainant's rights to honour and privacy and that her intention had been to degrade the complainant and to place her in a situation of being discredited in the views of other TripAdvisor users.