For anyone who has no pretense other than that of live your life quietlywith no more restrictions than those of mere existence, the slightest indication that a administrative procedure lurking seems like a scary thing, when it’s not directly on your nerves. God presses, but the administrations drown. Everyone except Álvaro, a man from Oviedo who is not part of this majority: he has been fighting for two years with the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) and the courts of Asturias for just 100 euros and now also has beaten them.
“The DGT is moved by its collection effort. Usually, if you have a fine of 100 euros, you prefer to pay half in the first 15 days and get out of trouble. It is what Traffic takes advantage of. But my client is very stubborn,” Germán López, from Abastur Abogados Asesores, Álvaro’s legal representative, told EL ESPAÑOL.
It happened in 2020. López’s client was going through the kilometer 13 of the A-66 towards Gijón-Avilés, a point where a radar is installed on an arch to ensure that the 120 km/h limitation is met.
while driving, Álvaro was convinced that he was not doing anything illegal. However, the DGT did not think the same. At least, that is what the fine that came to him some time later made clear: 100 euros, without suspension of points, for driving at 133 km/h.
«Álvaro brought us the fine. I explained that he could pay 50 euros and forgetLopez recalls. Álvaro, patient as a Job asturianowilling to endure each and every one of the harsh tests that the administration, without a doubt, was going to put in his way until he demonstrated fidelity to his own stubbornness, he decided to go ahead.
«We raised the appeal by administrative means, but it did not prosper. We asked for all the documentation related to the radar and we appreciated that it was one of the model Multanova Radar 6F-MRLopez explains. The problem with this radar is that it doesn’t fit the Order ICT/155/2020, of February 7. According to current regulations, the radar must track the vehicle from when it enters the tracking area until it leaves, but this radar is not capable of performing this operation.
“If the radar does not support vehicle tracking, you have to take two photos of the offense at two different times: a panoramic view first and, two or three seconds later, another one of the license plate”, explains López. To her surprise (bless her, she must have thought), Traffic only provided a single photograph to the administrative procedure. That is, he had found the system failure.
Precedent in Grenada
«The only photo that the radar could take was the panoramic view of the vehicle. Even so, our administrative appeal is dismissed and the sanction is confirmedLopez says. At this point, after the discovery, Álvaro did not intend to give up. He claimed the annulment of the sanction to the contentious court with the confidence of someone who knows that he has a goal advantage.
When Álvaro insists that Germán López continue fighting, the lawyer begins to dive through the marshes of existing sentences hoping to find something similar somewhere in Spain: «I based on a sentence of a contentious court of Granada, of 2018 or 2019where they agreed with the appellant for a very similar fine».
The Provincial Traffic Headquarters was not going to sit still. Then add to the file a new image of the license plate, supposedly made by the same radar. What he did not say, of course, is that, like the lamplighter who hides his real hand, that photograph was a simple enlargement of the original photograph. A mere Photoshop operation, more typical of the cinema of Antonioni and De Palmathan from a state institution.
“It is a very correct sentence. I was surprised because the judge thoroughly analyzed the photographs. It is clearly seen that it is an enlargement of the panoramic image: neither the kilometer point, nor the speed, nor the identification of the highway appears…”, says López.
In effect, the judge louis squareof the Contentious Administrative Court No. 1 of Oviedo, decreed on October 7 that there was a breach of the rule, not a defect, and the sanction should be declared null. In addition, as EL ESPAÑOL has been able to verify, the ruling “imposes the costs on the defendant Administration.”
Millionaires loses
In 2015, the last year in which Tráfico provided information on what was collected, the radar that has lost the legal battle «operated 330 days, in which it gave rise to 7,074 sanctions for a total amount of 737.600 euros. In other words, it is one of the highest-grossing in the region, with 2,235 euros per day«, reports ‘El Comercio’. This radar has continued to function continuously ever since.
This same week, a colleague from the union called López to facilitate the sentence, since he has a similar case in A Coruña: opens the possibility that all the sanctions imposed in Spain by this model of radars be declared null.
«The nullity decreed by the sentence is radical. The act is null, as if it had never existed and, therefore, the expiration of the act does not operate. Typically, Traffic will initiate a return process of all the fines imposed by this radarLopez alleges.
In his dive for the sentences he also found another case of radar that did not comply with the regulations, in this case because it was poorly calibrated. The engineer from Gijón detected it Samuel Moran in 2019, which was also headed until it beat the DGT. “Traffic decided ex officio to return the sanctions and, although 100% has not been returned, they have done so with a large part of them.”
Therefore, assuming that in subsequent years that radar has continued to issue a similar number of fines as in 2015, «we are talking about millions of euros that Traffic will have to return. We are going to put 700,000 euros on average for these seven years. The result is around five millionLopez calculates. A real ruin that the DGT can only avoid if it is able to demonstrate that everything has been charged correctly, something that “is going to be quite complicated.”