mentioned, are usually small and medium-sized companies because of their turnover. VI. The coherence of Article 161.1 of the TRLGDCU, following its reform in 2018 As I said, once Directive 2015/2302 (DVC&SVV) had been approved, the Spanish regulator was obliged to transpose it into our national legislation, which it did by means of Royal Decree-Law 23/2018. It must be said that, with this regulation, the regulator is abandoning its conservative character, which was reflected in the transposition of the articles of the Directives into domestic law, so that, instead of reproducing the wording of Article 13 of the aforementioned Directive, it maintains the joint and several liability of the organiser and the retailer towards the consumer. Indeed, the literal wording of the provision states that "[t]he organisers and retailers of package travel shall be jointly and severally liable towards the traveller for the proper performance of the travel services included in the contract, irrespective of whether those services are to be performed by themselves or by other providers". It goes on to say that whoever is liable to the traveller (a broader concept than the consumer) has a right of recourse against whoever is responsible for the 19 defective performance or non-performance of the contract, depending on the scope oh their respective management of the travel. In our opinion, this statement limits the right of recourse only and exclusively to the contract between the organiser and the retailer, with the organiser having the right of recourse against the entrepreneur who, on the basis of the previous agreements, should have duly provided the service, since the organisation of the trip falls within his sphere of management. However, this statement is modulated by the provision contained in the third paragraph, which vaguely recognises the possibility for the organiser or the retailer to bring an action against third parties who have contributed to the damage which gave rise to the compensation, price reduction or other obligations assumed towards the consumer by one of the two operators involved in the package travel contract. How can the two paragraphs be interpreted in a coherent way? In my opinion, in order to reconcile the two paragraphs, the first paragraph must necessarily It opts for a broad concept that includes any traveller regardless of the reason for the package, in any of its 19 combinations, including those made by companies for professional reasons, but it is true that we already had a broader concept of consumer for package travel than that contained in Article 3 of the TRLGDCU.
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