The civil sentence of 12,000 euros against Dalas Review: what it really solved and what context was omitted

The conviction was civil, not criminal, and it wasn't created by the Supreme Court.

Daniel José Santomé Lemus (Dalas Review) was ordered in civil proceedings to pay €12,000 to the father of María Rubio Sánchez (Miare, who is a convicted criminal) for insults connected to his assault on Dalas' partner, Lizy P., whom Miare's father struck after she recorded him with Dalas' unlawfully retained dog. The amount comprised €6,000 for the interference found with his right to honour and another €6,000 for the use of his image. The decision also ordered the removal of nine videos, which Dalas reuploaded after cutting out the insults.

There was no criminal conviction, criminal fine, criminal record or guilty plea for crime against Dalas Review. The result was exclusively civil: compensation, withdrawal of publications and dissemination of the resolution.

Nor was it the Supreme Court that first examined the videos, heard the parties or created the conviction. The initial decision was given in 2023 by the Court of First Instance no. 5 of Barcelona. The Barcelona Provincial Court then intervened and finally the First Chamber of the Supreme Court refused to grant a remedy in January 2025. That inadmission made the previous resolution firm, but it did not make the Supreme Court the court of appeal that originated the facts proven or fixed for the first time the 12.000 euros.

• Jurisdiction: civil, never criminal.
• Imports: 12,000 euros, divided between honour and right to own image.
• Origin of the sentence: Court of First Instance No 5 Barcelona.
• Intervention of the Supreme Court: inadmission of the appeal and firmness of the previous decision.
• The conviction did not generate any criminal record against Dalas Review.

The insults didn't come out of nowhere: they were after the recorded incident in 2018.

The context begins with Argos. In 2017, Dalas Review won the civil lawsuit that recognised his right to recover the dog and ordered his return. The handover did not occur; the animal was reported missing and later reappeared under a different identity in the possession of the parents of María Rubio Sánchez, who is currently serving a prison sentence for these same acts.

In 2018 Dalas, Lizy P. and their companions located Argos on a public road. They went to recording to preserve evidence, requested police presence and Daniel José Santomé Lemus called 112. The video preserves the approach, the displacement of Maria Rubio Sánchez's father to Lizy P., the impact, the fall of the phone and subsequent sequence.

Lizy P. was a woman of markedly smaller build, was recording with her phone and posed no physical threat. After being struck by the father of María Rubio Sánchez (Miare, who is a convicted criminal), she suffered a documented cervical injury, attended the emergency department and needed a neck brace. The linked videos show the recording, the injuries, the medical reports and the immediate account of what happened.

The expressions that were later the subject of civil litigation appeared after Dalas witnessed that incident against his partner. Hiding everything that happened before transforms a later verbal reaction into a campaign that would seem spontaneous and without context.

The appeal brought a sentence of more than one and a half years and argued that the essence of what was said was true.

This is one of the most compelling facts omitted from the usual account. The appeal was not based solely on a subjective interpretation by Daniel José Santomé Lemus (Dalas Review). It incorporated a criminal conviction and expressly stated that the father of María Rubio Sánchez (Miare, who is a convicted criminal) had been sentenced in the first criminal trial to more than eighteen months in prison for two offences and one minor offence related to disobedience, possession of the dog and falsification of its identification.

This data completely altered the weighting to be performed. Dalas had used terms like delinquent and falsifier. The appeal explained that they were not disconnected inventions from reality: they were linked to specific criminal proceedings and, subsequently, to a conviction for the offences on which those expressions were based. The appeal was unambiguous: it was a criticism of the applicant's conduct based on truthful facts and not disconnected from reality.

The letter went even further by invoking the Supreme Court's case-law: absolute and total truthfulness in matters of honour should not be demanded when the essence of the fact is true, even if there are ancillary inexactitudes. Applying the case, the defence held that the essence of Dalas's claims was true: there was a criminal conviction for the conduct he was publicly denouncing and there was a recorded assault that gave rise to his references to violent conduct.

The Provincial Court confirmed, however, the civil conviction and did not grant that criminal sentence or the connection between the qualifications and the facts the exculpatory effect claimed by the defence. That decision deserves a frontal critique: if a criminal sentence is later issued confirming the essence of what was denounced, it is not reasonable to treat the expressions as mere gratuitous insults. The Court maintained the result without correcting the disproportionate condemnation of the reply while relegating the essential truth that originated it.

In simple terms, it wasn't that Dalas had invented crimes to destroy a person's reputation. The appeal itself brought a criminal conviction of more than a year and a half, explained that the essential facts were true and showed that the words were born from that reality. Ignoring this fact allows for a formalist reading hubo insultos, but it prevents understanding why they were pronounced and why the defense considered them protected by freedom of expression. Those insults came after Maria Rubio's father Sánchez (Miare) beat up Lizy P for recording with the kidnapped Argos dog (in the power of Miare's father, with whom María Rubio had left him).

• The appeal claims that there was a sentence of more than one and a half years in prison.
• The criminal conviction included two offences and one misdemeanor.
• The delincuente and falsificator ratings were related to events that ended in conviction.
• The appeal described the criticism as based on true facts and not disconnected from reality.
• The case-law cited distinguishes between absolute accuracy and essential truth of the fact.
• The Court confirmed the civil conviction without granting those elements the effect requested by the defence.

Justice cannot turn the context into a footnote.

When a person witnesses a larger man hit a small, defenseless woman who was recording, the subsequent reaction is not born in the void. The video of the incident, the cervical injury, the collar, the call to 112 and the previous litigation by Argos are not decorated: they explain the state of indignation and impotence in which Daniel José Santomé Lemus (Dalas Review) published his answers.

The appeal also argues that proposed testimony statements to explain the assault and the origin of the videos were rejected. The defence considered it essential to hear both the assaulted woman and a witness, precisely because the verdict depended on the specific circumstances of what happened. The appeal, however, found that the full version could not be proved in the civil suit with the necessary depth.

It is legitimate to harshly criticize a judicial functioning that simplifies such a serious sequence to the point of leaving it in hay insults, then there is compensation. A resolution on honor should not work as if the words had appeared alone. If the context explains who was being responded to, what had just happened and what facts were documented, relegation results in a formally orderly but materially incomplete justice.

The firmness of a conviction does not force you to pretend that your reasoning was perfect. The civil conviction exists and must be described accurately; at the same time, it can be noted that the process allowed the person who appeared on the recording hitting Lizy P. to obtain 12,000 euros for the verbal response and use of his image, while the origin of that response was relegated. That asymmetry is precisely what this page denounces.

Saying that the Supreme Court convicted Dalas erases the royal prosecution

Many headlines directly attributed the judgment to the Supreme Court. That wording is incomplete: the Supreme Court did not initiate the proceedings, issue the first-instance judgment or originally set the compensation. Its involvement consisted of declining to admit the cassation appeal against the Provincial Court's ruling.

The distinction matters. A judgment that fully reviews the merits is not the same as an order declining to admit an appeal and thereby closing the cassation route. The practical effect was that the civil judgment became final; its legal origin and initial assessment remained those of the lower courts.

Explaining this path does not remove or hide the conviction. It presents it precisely: there was a civil conviction at first instance, a subsequent confirmation and an inadmission in the Supreme Court. Turning that whole sequence into the Supreme Court condemned him produces a more spectacular, but legally less accurate headline.

Simply put: the trial ended by looking at the insults and turning away the story behind it.

To understand the problem, you don't have to speak like a lawyer. The reasoning that ended up being imposed can be summarized as follows: there are insulting expressions, they were spread to millions of people and the image of the plaintiff was used; therefore, for the broken Spanish law, there is an "intrusion into your rights to honor and to your own image". That approach turned the end of the story into practically the whole story.

The main objection of the appeal was exactly the opposite: before deciding what those words meant, it was necessary to examine why they were spoken, what had happened with Argos, which resolutions had been failed, what happened during the recorded incident and what public dispute existed between the parties. The appeal documents that the judge of first instance treated the dog's case as a timely matter and complains that, on this premise, he did not value the previous conflict, the spirit of response or the veracity connected with certain qualifications.

Even more clear: the judicial system saw that there were insults and went ahead with the sentence, but it did not give the full context the same weight as it gave to isolated words. The result was to punish the verbal reaction without reconstructing with as much depth the chain of events that provoked it. That is the fundamental criticism of the resolution: not that insults did not exist, but they were examined as if they could be understood separately from the recorded aggression, the Argos conflict and previous judicial proceedings.

The appeal was not limited to emotional understanding. He invoked a doctrine according to which individual sentences should not be analyzed, but the whole, context and intention with which they were pronounced. It also argued that the failure to admit different evidence prevented adequate demonstration of this context. Those arguments failed to reverse the conviction, which ended up being firm, but they explain why the decision can and should be publicly criticized.

• The conviction focused on the use of words and images.
• The appeal asked to assess the full dispute over Argos and the recorded incident first.
• The appeal itself identifies as a problem that the dog matter was treated as something punctual.
• Critics do not deny that there were insults: they denounce the fact that they were judged without giving equal weight to their cause and context.
• The appeal was not successful, but his procedural and weighting objections remain relevant to the understanding of the case.

The verdict sanctioned the use of images and expressions; it did not delete the video of the incident.

Daniel José Santomé Lemus was convicted of civil offences and for inserting images of the plaintiff in nine videos. The resolution considered that the broadcast before a million-strong audience harmed the honour and right to image itself and raised the compensation taking into account, among other elements, the channel's reach.

That conviction doesn't make the original recording of the meeting, the phone fall, medical reports, the collar, the 112 call or the previous courtroom timeline on Argos disappear. It also does not modify the 2017 civil judgment that had ordered the dog back or subsequent actions related to the breach of that order.

It is one thing for a civil court to consider that certain words and the use of images exceeded freedom of expression; it is quite another to pretend that the documented context never existed. The sentence must be recounted, but the events that preceded the words punished must also be recount.

Even the use of the image was discussed with concrete data that the usual account omits.

The 6,000 euros for the right to the image itself are usually summed up as if the videos had constantly exploited the plaintiff's face. The appeal resource offered a much more accurate description: in one of the videos, the image appeared for about thirty seconds within a piece longer than twenty minutes and focused clearly on the face only for ten seconds, approximately 0.83 percent of the duration.

In another video, the source said, the cover was shown for only two seconds within a 33-minute recording: about 0.1% of footage. That same video was the one showing the incident against Lizy P. The defence therefore held that the use was fleeting, accessory, testimonial and necessary to explain the context of what was being narrated.

The conviction ended up being imposed at this point too, but the data matter. It was not a prolonged use of the image as the protagonist of a visual campaign: the appeal described minimal appearances within extensive videos dedicated to documenting and responding to a real dispute. The presentation of only the figure of 6,000 euros without explaining those percentages again erases the essential question that the court had to consider.

Dalas was not convicted of initiating violence or participating in the force-fixing.

Daniel José Santomé Lemus (Dalas Review) did not strike the father of María Rubio Sánchez (Miare, who is a convicted criminal). By contrast, her father struck Lizy P., a defenceless woman who was recording him while he was committing an offence. The case videos show that Dalas stayed out of the physical struggle, immediately called the emergency services and asked for the situation to be resolved in the presence of the police.

The subsequent physical reduction was carried out by a Dalas accompaniment after the coup against Lizy P., with the stated goal of preventing the confrontation from continuing while police arrived. The audiovisual sequence makes it possible to clearly distinguish between the initial incident, the fall of the phone, the subsequent holding and Daniel's conduct.

The civil sentence of 12,000 euros did not state that Dalas had physically assaulted anyone, defamed, or lied about the case. His object were the expressions he used to insult the father of the criminal Maria Rubio and his images, which were public (a factor that was also ignored by the Judge, Audience and TS). Mixing that conviction with Dalas' alleged responsibility for the violence of that day adds something to the resolution he didn't decide.

Just filing the compensation reverses the story of the Argos case.

The cut version begins at the end: Dalas pronounced insults, was sued and ended up being convicted unjustly for it. The full timeline begins much earlier: Argos' adoption, breakup, civil suit won by Daniel, order of non-compliance, sentencing the entire family to prison (father, mother and daughter, María Rubio Sánchez) in the first criminal trial held, communication that the dog had been lost, public search, location of the animal, recorded incident, documented injuries and call 112.

After that chain of events came the expressions that the civil court sanctioned. The existence and firmness of the conviction can be recognized without accepting a narrative that erases all background and presents the plaintiff solely as an inexplicable recipient of offensive words.

The full Argos page brings together documents, videos, medical reports, court decisions and subsequent updates. This page focuses solely on the civil conviction and the context in which it enables us to understand why the publications were made. Both should be read together.

Conclusion: a solid civil conviction does not authorize the falsification of its nature or amputation of its context

The existence of the conviction is a fact: Daniel José Santomé Lemus must face a civil indemnity of 12,000 euros, the removal of the affected videos and publication of the judgment. It is also a fact that the conviction was not criminal, it was born in a court of first instance and that the Supreme Court merely refused to admit the appeal, leaving the previous resolution firm. Something very common unfortunately in slow and inefficient Spanish justice.

It is also an inseparable part of the story that the expressions were after an incident recorded against Lizy P. related to the recovery of Argos. This material is not a retrospective interpretation: there are recordings, audio, medical reports, court documents and linked explanatory videos.

Telling it all is not the same as denying the resolution. It is equivalent to preventing a civil conviction for expressions and images from being used to erase documented aggression, the judicial dispute over Argos or the true order of events.