Spanish court increases prison sentence of two paparazzi for snapping topless photos of TV presenter at Bora Bora hotel

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TV presenter Mariló Montero on her arrival at the Barcelona court in January 2024. EFE Legal Spanish court increases prison sentence of two paparazzi for snapping topless photos of TV presenter at Bora Bora hotel

The pair were found guilty of photographing the journalist Mariló Montero in 2015 without her consent

Cristian Reino

Barcelona

Thursday, 18 December 2025, 20:44

The appeals section of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has increased the sentence of two paparazzi, Gustavo González and Diego Arrabal, who committed a crime of disclosure of secrets by photographing journalist Mariló Montero in a hotel in Bora Bora in 2015, without her consent.

The sentence partially overturns a sentence handed down by the Barcelona court in 2024, following an appeal by Montero, and increases the sentence from ten months' imprisonment and a fine to one year and one day's imprisonment for each of the defendants and special disqualification from exercising the right to stand for public office and from engaging in any activity related to press agencies for one year.

The judgment states that "there is no doubt" that the capturing of the images, which show Montero topless, clearly violated her privacy. "This cannot be considered justified by the exercise of the right to information about a public figure, as invoked in the appeal," the ruling says, adding that "the photographs were taken clandestinely, using special devices". The captured images, due to their content, "affect the core of her personal privacy".

"They were captured surreptitiously," the sentence says. Mariló Montero and a friend were on the balcony of a hotel where they were staying, "behaving in a calm and relaxed manner in the context of the inherent expectation of privacy", which highlights that it is of particular "intrusive significance in terms of privacy" that the journalist appeared in the photographs "with her torso naked".

According to the sentence, the director of Lecturas magazine refused to buy the photos that had been offered to him, as he acknowledged the "unlawfulness" of capturing them. The ruling therefore states that the defendants must "have also been aware of the unlawfulness of the photographs".

The ruling can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Spain.