Ayuso's boyfriend's cosmetic surgery

BarcelonaLegal language is often technical and difficult to understand, but this is assumed to be necessary to meet the requirement of specificity expected in judges' rulings—especially when they are convictions. Therefore, it is surprising that in the case of the Attorney General, the Supreme Court justices resorted to an example they themselves consider "simple" to explain, plainly and simply, why they convicted Álvaro García Ortiz. "The plastic surgeon who has operated on a celebrity, whose physical transformation has generated a public debate about whether their new appearance is the result of surgery or any other medical procedure, can never participate in the controversy by confirming or denying the reality of this operation. If they did so, they would incur criminal liability." It is understood that the Attorney General is the surgeon and that Alberto González Amador is the patient who underwent cosmetic surgery. The same principle, the ruling explains, would apply if a patient's medical information were disclosed.

The example has so many loopholes that the two dissenting judges also cling to it in their separate opinion, pointing out that healthcare personnel could provide information about the case—within limits of data protection—"if this patient misrepresents the information by stating that it came from the medical center."

The judges who support the conviction seek a more everyday analogy to try to explain a case that may seem strange to the public. Because there aren't many occasions in which a leak to the media becomes a cause for legal dispute. In fact, the judges themselves dedicate an entire chapter of the ruling to defending the principle that journalists should not have to reveal their sources as one of the elements of protecting the veracity of the information they publish. During the trial, none of the journalists pointed the finger at García Ortiz—some even openly denied it—but that didn't matter, because most of the courtroom was certain that the Attorney General had performed the cosmetic surgery on Ayuso's boyfriend.