In legal contexts desleal, deslealtad and infidelidad are not always translated literally as “disloyal,” “disloyalty” or “infidelity.” As examples, competencia desleal refers to “unfair competition,” while in corporate law contexts administración social desleal o fraudulenta may denote some aspect of “corporate mismanagement or fraud.” In that regard, directors have a deber de lealtad (“fiduciary duty”) to act solely in the interest of their company, defined in the DEJ as la obligación de desempeñar el cargo de administrador atendiendo únicamente a los intereses de la sociedad. In this sense, deslealtad societaria refers to a director’s “breach of fiduciary duty” to the company.

Deslealtad also appears in the expression deslealtad profesional, which in Spain refers specifically to “professional misconduct” on the part of lawyers and procuradores who, for example, by action or omission prejudice their clients, or who defend interests contrary to those of their client.

The term infidelidad is also used in Spain in criminal law contexts in which it would be more accurately rendered as “breach,” rather than literally as “disloyalty.” Two specific offenses in which this might be the case are infidelidad en la custodia de presos (perhaps expressed as “breach of duty [or] misconduct in the custody of prisoners”) and infidelidad en la custodia de documentos y violación de secretos (which might be rendered as “breach of duty in the custody of documents and disclosure of privileged information”).