A prerogative is a type of privilege that is granted to someone because of the position they occupy or their social position. Therefore, it is a special benefit that is intended to protect the person benefited. In general, these benefits are associated with civil or military authorities and with certain public offices.
Prerogatives are not always related to senior positions. In fact, an ordinary person can obtain a prerogative from the state in exceptional situations, such as when a prisoner is granted special leave for the death of a close family member or when someone gets an unusual administrative exemption as a result of a natural disaster. (When there are floods, it is common for the state to be flexible in relation to taxes and prerogatives are given to the affected people).
The prerogatives in the political sphere
In most constitutions, a series of prerogatives are contemplated for the legal protection of members of the government, monarchs or the highest authorities of the state. This does not mean that the prerogatives should be interpreted as a simple privilege, since the people benefited by them are not exempt from complying with their obligations to justice, but they will be judged by non-ordinary courts of justice, for example by the supreme court of a nation.
The assessment in Spain is a modality of prerogative
In Spain there are certain high-ranking public positions that cannot be tried by the same judicial procedures as other citizens. This happens because they are gauged (gauged comes from jurisdiction, a term that refers to the privileges of the Middle Ages that were granted to citizens in some Spanish towns).
At present, the aforementioned in Spain is similar to that applied in other countries, for example, in Great Britain with the royal family
Affarmation should not be understood as a synonym of immunity from the law, but this legal figure has the purpose of protecting senior officials from possible lawsuits with a destabilizing or illegitimate purpose.
As is logical, in Spain there is a certain controversy in relation to the afarment. For some it is a justified procedure, while for others it is a privilege that should not exist because it goes against the idea of equality before the law.
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