Fourteen bar owners in Mallorca are to stand trial for illegally showing LaLiga football matches.
Their cases relate to a 2019 National Police operation into showing matches without permissions or pirating television signals or using foreign channels through the internet in order to show the games. The bars in question are from all over Mallorca - Alcudia, Arta, Calvia, Capdepera, Consell, Felanitx, Inca, Manacor, Palma, Sant Llorenç, Santa Margalida, Son Servera and Vilafranca.
LaLiga is demanding sentences of two and a half years for crimes against industrial property. In addition, LaLiga wants fines of 4,800 euros per owner and a total of some 100,000 euros civil liability for breach of rights.
The Prosecutor's Office takes a different view. It opposes prison sentences and believes that the offences were only mild. In this regard, the Prosecutor disagrees with the opinion of the court that instructed the case, which determined that these were serious offences.
Opinion centres not on the legality of showing these matches - there is agreement that it was illegal - but on the severity in terms of violation of industrial or intellectual property. In essence, so the Prosecutor argues, there is a difference between showing a match from a football competition and, for example, a film, for which there is creative input.