Two activists risk one and two years in prison for disobedience and resistance to authority during the boycott of the presentation in Barcelona of a book that they considered “transphobic”: “No one is born in the wrong body” (Editorial Planeta ) by José Errasti and Marino Pérez Alvárez. The demonstration, for which they will sit in the dock this Wednesday, was convened by the entities Crida LGTBI and Sororitrans on May 16, 2022, and gave rise to a gathering in front of the Casa del Libro on Rambla Cataluña which, despite the deployment of Mossos d’Esquadra, had to lower the blinds to avoid incidents.
Among the fifty people who made up the demonstration, two activists, Janet Catalán, member of the ERC youth, and BVM, now accused, were deployed at the entrance to the business with the aim, according to the prosecution, “to prevent or less making the presentation more difficult The cordon deployed by the Catalan police allowed those present at the event to enter, which some of those gathered also attempted to do.
Thus, both Catalán and the other defendants “overcame the police line by forcefully pushing the members of the Mobile Brigade and the director of private security of Grupo Planeta, to which the establishment belongs, and managed to penetrate a few meters inside the building. the bookstore against the will of its owner which, through the intermediary of the security manager, had been expressed”, we read in the indictment of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Thus, Janet Catalán “violently opposed” one of the agents, to whom she dealt “a blow with a three-meter pole on the left shoulder, aware that this violated the principle of authority, as well as than his physical integrity. . Although neither the authors of the book nor the bookstore reported what happened, the prosecution considers that the actions of the two activists constitute a crime of trespass, another of disobedience and, in the case of Catalán, a crime of resistance in competition with another. minor crime of injury.
For this reason, he requests a year in prison for both for the offense and, in the case of Catalán, an additional year for the crime of resistance in conjunction with the minor crime of injury, as well as 1,050 euros and compensation for the police.
Before the trial, Esquerra Republicana called a rally in support of Catalán, this Tuesday, at 8:30 a.m., in front of the City of Justice. The party says it is asking for two years in prison for the accused for “defending the rights of the LGTBIQ+ group”. For their part, the Republican youth emphasize that “the demonstration was peaceful” and took place “normally”.
