Crime of Harassment

According to article 172 ter of the Penal Code, they are the following:

• To watch someone, to stalk them, or to seek their physical proximity.
• Establishing or attempting to establish contact with the victim through any means or through third parties.
• By misusing the victim’s personal data, purchasing products, contracting services, or having third parties contact them.
• Violate their freedom or property, or the freedom or property of another person close to them.

Harassment also includes the use of a person’s image to create advertisements or open fake profiles on social media or any other public media, causing harassment, stalking, or humiliation.

For a behavior to constitute the crime of harassment, the following circumstances must occur:

• That the activity is insistent and repeated, that is, that it is a set of actions that are repeated over time.
• That the active subject is not legitimately authorized to carry out this conduct.
• And that, as a consequence of these events, the victim’s daily life is seriously disrupted.

The crime of harassment generally carries a prison sentence of 3 months to 2 years or a fine of 6 to 24 months .

However, creating fake ads or opening fake profiles on social media carries a slightly lesser penalty: a prison sentence of 3 months to 1 year or a fine of 6 to 12 months.

On the other hand, if the victim of the crime is a close relative of the perpetrator, the penalty imposed is more severe: 1 to 2 years in prison or 70 to 120 days of community service.

Article 172 quater punishes harassment directed at women, with the aim of impeding their right to voluntary termination of pregnancy. In this case, harassment is understood to mean annoying, offensive, intimidating, or coercive acts that impair their freedom. In this case, the associated penalty is imprisonment of three months to one year or community service of 31 to 80 days.

The same article 172 quater penalizes harassment of healthcare workers and medical or management staff at centers authorized to terminate pregnancies, in their professional practice, with the aim of hindering their practice.

As a lawyer specializing in stalking crimes in Barcelona , we can affirm that the crime of stalking requires that the perpetrator’s actions seriously impact the victim’s daily life. That is, the acts of stalking must cause changes in the victim’s daily behavior, although it does not necessarily have to affect all areas of their life.

Therefore, the facts will not constitute a crime if the impact on the victim is limited to merely causing annoyance.

Neither the Criminal Code nor the Courts have established a minimum number of acts or behaviors. What is required is that these acts be carried out by the perpetrator repeatedly, repeatedly, and over a period of time.