commercial traffic, avoiding the discrepancies between the many provincial courts. Obviously, with this wording, the scope of the traveller's protection has been extended so that the traveller can take legal action against any or all of the parties involved, if he so wishes, in order to obtain financial compensation for the damage caused to him in the performance of the contract . It thus 16 followed the line that had been defended by most of the minor jurisprudence, as well as that promoted by part of the doctrine, in favour of the consumer , 17 which was justified in the STS of 20 January 2010, by the extension and quantitative importance of these trips and their impact on the quality of life of the traveller, as well as being in line with the legislator´s obligation to seek the maximum protection of the consumer, in accordance with Articles 51 and 53 of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 . 18 However, the solution adopted by the Supreme Court and contained in article 162.1 of the TRLGDCU worsened the situation of marketing agencies, usually small companies, when they offered, as retailers, trips organised by wholesalers, usually stronger and more solvent agencies. Indeed, in many cases, and because it was easier to sue the seller of the trip, these agencies had to pay compensation to consumers for the acts or omissions of the organising agencies or the service providers selected by them. It is true that these retailers could take action against the organisers in order to recover what they had paid to the consumer, as the rule makes clear, but this satisfaction came after they had already had to compensate the user, causing economic damage to the companies, which, as I have already Coll Carreños, 2010, p. 111, considers that this article is the most "guarantor of the protection that our 16 legal system offers to the consumer, because it does not seem fair to require the creditor, the victim of an injurious act, to make the arduous effort to identify the persons who may be affected by the decision handed down, especially if we consider that the error in the choice of defendants has consequences as frightening as those of acquittal in the first instance, as a result of the estimation, ex officio or at the request of the party, of the lack of passive litisconsortium. Joint and several liability is clear not only from the jurisprudential doctrine followed since 2001 by the SC, 17 but also in its Judgment of 20 January 2010 of unification of doctrine, which expressly states that the current Article 162 of the TRLGDCU clarifies the "joint and several nature of the liability towards the traveller, which the tormented wording of Article 11 (of the LVC) allowed for discussion". Consequently, this ruling establishes the joint and several liability of organisers and retailers in general, going beyond what was contemplated by the legislator, which only provides in Article 11 of the repealed LVC when there is a plurality of responsible parties in the same area of management of the trip, establishing for the rest of the cases, the most common ones, in which an organiser and a retailer concur, a different liability for each one of them. Pérez Escolar, 2013, pp. 148 y s. 18
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