Maritime Police identify the man who photographed bathers at Monte Clérigo
A 68-year-old Spanish national was identified on 1 August at the Aljezur beach. The photographs were seized and the file has gone to the public prosecutor, who has opened an inquiry.
The Maritime Police have identified the man who was photographing bathers without their consent at Monte Clérigo beach in Aljezur. According to the Autoridade Marítima Nacional statement on the case, officers from the Lagos local command approached him on Saturday 1 August. He is a 68-year-old Spanish national.
The call came in late in the afternoon, after people on the beach held the man and contacted the authorities. When officers arrived they found a set of photographs on his phone, taken on that beach, with women and children framed without knowing it.
The images were seized as evidence. The file went to the Ministério Público, the public prosecution service, which now has to weigh what was collected and decide what happens next. An inquiry is open.
Photographing strangers on a Portuguese beach is not a legal free-for-all
Public sand does not cancel the right to your own image. Portugal’s penal code punishes photographing or filming someone without their consent, and the offence is treated more seriously when the images involve minors or expose someone’s private life. Nothing has to be published for a crime to exist. Capturing the image is enough.
That is also how the case became public. A video filmed by other beachgoers went round social media before any official statement, and most people learned about it from that clip rather than from the police.
One decision still hangs over the case and has caused unease locally. The phone was not seized and stayed with the suspect, even though the photographs themselves were preserved. It is one of the loose ends the prosecutor will have to deal with.
Coastal policing in the Algarve has lately been pointed out to sea, after cocaine kept washing ashore between Comporta and Tróia earlier this summer. Monte Clérigo is a reminder that a good deal of the work is still on the sand, and still depends on whoever happens to be standing there.
Photo: Rui Glória / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
