COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM ACTIVITIES 233 The Constitutional Court of the Supreme Justice Court, regarding the figure of the consumer, has also said: “(…) it is well known that the consumer is at the end of the chain formed by the production, distribution and commercialization of the consumer goods that he needs to acquire for his personal satisfaction and his participation in this process, it does not respond to technical or professional reasons, but in the constant celebration of personal contracts. For this reason, his relationship, in this commercial sequence, is one of inferiority and requires special protection against the suppliers of goods and services, for the purposes that, prior to expressing his contractual consent, he has all the necessary elements of judgment, that will allow him to express it with complete freedom and this implies a thorough knowledge of the goods and services offered. They are included by what has been said, in a harmonious mixture, featuring several constitutional principles, such as the state concern in favour of the widest sectors of the population when acting as consumers, the reaffirmation of individual freedom by providing individuals with the free disposition of patrimony with the help of the greatest possible knowledge of the good or service to be acquired, the protection of health when it is involved, the ordering and systematization of reciprocal relations between the interested parties, the homologation of international commercial practices to the internal system and, finally, the greater protection of the operation of the inhabitant in the means of subsistence” (Resolution No. 1441-92, 02 June 1992). Now, as far as this matter is concerned, this principle of freedom must relate to the constitutional Article 46 that recognizes fundamental principles of our economic system, be it the freedom of trade and the assurance of free competition as an element of the social market system, so that any person has the right to choose the legally permitted commercial activity that best suits their interests. However, in its exercise, he must be subjected to the regulations that make possible their coexistence with other constitutionally respectable values; so that the exercise of trade does not entail the right to an unrestricted freedom, which is why our legal system establishes the possibility of limiting in a certain way those rights and freedoms (in the same sense as Vote 143-94, 11 January 1994). The Constitutional Court has also accepted the existence of legitimate limitations on freedom, stating that although every person has the right to a private sphere that is absolutely inviolable and inaccessible to the State and to third parties in general, to the extent that it invades or interferes with the sphere
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