Minimum sentence for the neo-Nazi bookseller in Barcelona. The Barcelona court only imposed 18 months in prison and a fine of 3,150 euros for hate crime on Pedro Varela, one of the historical leaders of the extreme right in Spain, but acquitted him of the rest of the crimes of which he was accused by the prosecution, including illicit association.
Beyond the prison sentences, the trial was about the definitive closure of the Europa bookstore and the Ojeda publishing house, owned by Varela and which published several neo-Nazi works. The acquittal on the crime of illicit association means that the judges rule out the definitive dissolution of the store and the company as well as the ban on reselling neo-Nazi books.
This conviction represents a major blow to the prosecution’s thesis against hate crimes in Barcelona, which has put Varela in the spotlight for years. This is the fourth trial against the neo-Nazi bookseller promoted by the Barcelona prosecutor’s office, which, together with the Mossos d’Esquadra, has dedicated several months of investigation into the bookseller’s neo-Nazi activities and has managed to obtain the preventive closure of the Europa bookstore and the publishing house through which Varela has published several neo-Nazi books.
The prosecution’s accusation is not only based on the sale of books, but also on the more than 260 conferences by negationist historians or politicians that Varela organized at the Europa bookstore in Barcelona as owner of the Ojeda publishing house. There are figures convicted of apologizing for genocide, such as the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke or the British revisionist David Irving.
Adherence to the prosecutor’s thesis could have meant the definitive closure of the Europa bookstore and the Varela publishing house, but by convicting them only of hate crime, the judges chose to order the seizure and destruction of the computer equipment and neo-Nazi books already seized in the 2016 operation that led to the preventive closure of the store, and not to prohibit their publication and resale.
