Why do we look down on security guards?

The contempt for security guards: mere ignorance or legal calculation?

Insulting a security guard in Spain is not a crime. Insulting a police officer is. This legal asymmetry partly explains why a library user dared to call a guard a "half-badge piece of shit" and tell him he wasn't afraid of him. The anecdote, shared on social media, has peine the debate about the real role of these professionals.

The key difference lies in the status of "authority". A police officer has public faith: his report is admissible as evidence in court. A security guard does not. That is why defying a security guard carries no direct incivil consequences, while showing contempt for an officer can lead to a conviction for assault on an officer or disobedience. As a recurring analysis points out, the police officer's power lies not in the baton but in the pen: his ability to put in writing a report that the system backs up.

And yet, the security guard is not harmless. He carries a baton, handcuffs and defensive spray. In a scuffle, his capacity to cause harm is comparable to that of a police officer. What good is knowing you are not committing a crime if you end up in a room with a bruise? The paradox is that respect should come not from the law but from real danger, yet society tends to calibrate its antiestéticar based on legal status.

The debate also brings up an uncomfortable nuance: whoever insults a police officer is exposed to the State's "administrative violence"; whoever insults a security guard is exposed to direct physical violence, with no institutional backing. Both can be equally harmful, but one is perceived as more serious because it comes from a body with formal legitimacy.

Are we undervaluing security guards? Perhaps the problem is not their lack of authority, but ours in confusing legal impunity with physical safety. Until the law equates their functions, contempt will remain free in the courtroom but costly on the street.