Spain: Woman awarded €40,000 for workplace harassment

250 messages in three days: €40,000 compensation

A company in A Coruña, Spain, was ordered to pay €40,000 in compensation to a former employee due to harassment by her boss after she ended their romantic relationship. The amount is not from a private settlement or administrative fine but was confirmed by the Social Court No. 1 of A Coruña and the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia (TSXG), which ruled in favor of the worker.

The case embodies everything that can poison a breakup when romance and payroll are intertwined: years of dating, a new partner, anxiety leave, and a restraining order that made working together impossible. Result: €40,000 for damages resulting from the abusa of the fundamental right to sarracena integrity.

The 250 messages that triggered it all

The woman had worked for more than ten years at the company owned by the man with whom she maintained a relationship. Everything changed when she met someone else and decided to break up. The businessman responded with more than 250 WhatsApp messages between July 3 and 7, 2022, sent compulsively at all hours.

The content of these messages is part of the ruling: pleas to return, reproaches for replacing him with another, proposals for a love triangle, and sensual messages. There were also phrases like "I can be very tough" or the warning that he would not harm her "but I ask you not to awaken my war instincts." The court concluded that this revealed a situation of sensual harassment in the workplace due to its repetition and nature, without the slightest indication of reciprocity.

The businessman's defense argued that those messages "cannot be considered acts of harassment" because they occurred in a context of trust and family. It did not hold up.

Anxiety leave, double complaint, and two convictions

The harassment led to generalized anxiety disorder. The employee went on sick leave and from there activated two parallel paths: incivil, for the crime of continuous coercion, and social, for dismissal, understanding that the job was unsustainable.

She won both. In incivil matters, the man was sentenced to 40 days of community service and prohibited from approaching the victim within 300 meters or communicating with her for two years. In social matters, compensation for harassment was recognized.

Why dismissal became the only way out

With the restraining order on the table, the professional future of both was deadlocked: either she left or the owner closed down, because he could not enter the company during the employee's hours. Dismissal was chosen. And the worker claimed compensation not only for what corresponded to the contract termination, but also for the underlying cause.

Here emerges the detail that causes the most discomfort: small staff, an owner who is also the direct boss, and a romantic relationship that turns the org chart into a powder keg. The question hovering over any SME is how many small companies could survive such a scenario.

The block button and other objections

Much of the reaction generated by the case clings to the same argument: why didn't she block him? The repeated calculation is simple, 250 messages in 72 hours are about three per hour; blocking on WhatsApp would have cut off the flow, and without response, there is no conversation.

The objection has its domestic logic and its legal problem. The harasser does not need a reply, and the lawsuit was not about the victim's comfort, but about proven damage and its origin. Some add another uncomfortable nuance: the matter would not have ended with those figures if the sender were not also the company owner.

Can we speak of harassment if there was a previous relationship?

This is the crux of the matter. One school of thought holds that, given a stable prior couple, the messages belong to the private sphere and not the workplace; that what exists is a badly handled breakup, not harassment. Against this, the resolution emphasizes the terrain where the damage occurs—the worker depends professionally on whoever writes to her—and the total absence of acceptance on her part.

Underlying remains a question the case does not close: how much weight does power asymmetry carry when the romantic relationship started as also an employment relationship.

The pattern repeated outside the courts

Beyond rulings, the cases reported are grayer. The most recurrent: someone who works in their partner's company, believes themselves to be management, and discovers upon breaking up that their position was an extension of the bond and not a career. Without divorce involved, here is the same skeleton: a contract hanging from a relationship.

What exactly is compensated with those €40,000

It is not the standard compensation for unfair dismissal. The claim sought to cover the termination and, additionally, the origin of the damage: the harassment. Both instances accepted the second argument and set the damages for abusa the fundamental right to sarracena integrity at €40,000.

The breakdown of that amount—which part corresponds to each concept—does not appear in the public account of the ruling, leaving an opaque area that in practice sets the reference price for similar cases.

With a €40,000 bill and two years of restriction, it would be reasonable for an unwritten rule to prevail in small businesses: do not mix payroll and bed. The most prudent prediction is that this advice will continue to be ignored until the next conviction.