Two of the most important racism trials are stalled due to doubts among Barcelona judges over which court should hold the hearing. This is the case that must prosecute an Espanyol supporter for the racist cries against the Athletic Club de Bilbao striker Iñaki Williams and the case of the xenophobic attack against a juvenile center in which a leader is accused provincial of Vox, the historic neo-Nazi Jordi. de la Fuente.
There are at least two other proceedings affected by the judicial disagreement. In summary, the divergence is that the Barcelona Court considers that the competence to judge these hate crimes belongs to the criminal courts, while on the contrary, the criminal courts consider that it belongs to the Court. Although the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) decided that it was the criminal court which should judge the racist insults towards the footballer, two criminal judges insisted on declaring themselves incompetent and referred the case to the higher court .
The racist cries took place during the match between Espanyol and Athletic Club in Cornellà (Barcelona) in January 2020, while the attempted attack on a minor center in El Masnou (Barcelona) in which De la Source took place in July 2019. The trials were scheduled for the Barcelona court, but two of its sections refused to take up the cases in December 2023 and January 2024.
The TSJC confirmed that the jurisdiction to hold the trials belonged to the criminal courts and not to the Barcelona Court. But the surprise came once the cases reached the criminal courts. Two different magistrates declared themselves incompetent to hold the trials, the hearings therefore remain without date. Unless there is an unforeseen acceleration of the togados, they will not be celebrated until well before 2025 or 2026. More than five years after the events.
According to judicial sources, the Barcelona Criminal Court 2, which had set the hearing of the trial for insulting Williams for November 26, declared itself incompetent to hold the trial by order of the beginning of October and postponed it. at the Barcelona court.
All this despite the fact that the TSJC confirmed the decision of Section 6 of the Barcelona Court, which was initially supposed to judge the insults towards the footballer, according to which in reality the court competent to do so was a criminal court.
Other sources from the case in which the provincial leader of Vox is accused explain that history repeated itself in the case which must judge the attack against the juvenile center: the 5th section of the Court declined its jurisdiction, the TSJC approved that the trial It took place in a criminal court, but the Criminal Court 2 of Mataró sent it back to court last September. One of the defenses of the far-right defendants filed an appeal, which is still awaiting processing and resolution.
The conflict over hate crimes
The Criminal Procedure Law states that criminal courts must try cases of crimes punishable by prison terms of up to five years or other penalties of up to ten years. A good part of hate crimes were judged by provincial courts, since several of the terms of article 510 of the Penal Code (which is formally qualified as an offense against fundamental rights and public freedoms) could lead to penalties of forfeiture of a larger number of people. ten years.
The reform of the Penal Code from the so-called “only yes means yes” law resulted in a change in the criteria for granting trial jurisdiction to the fact that only the prison sentence (and not disqualification) must be considered to determine whether the case It should be tried before a criminal court or before the higher instance, the Audiencia.
Because recusal sentences for hate crimes are higher than prison sentences, provincial courts used to keep a good portion of trials. But the amendment to the Penal Code means that only prison sentences must be taken into account, which, in the case of hate crimes, are limited to a maximum of four years, which determines that jurisdiction lies with the criminal courts.
This happens in both cases. The prosecution is asking De la Fuente for two years and two months in prison and a five-year ban on practicing any educational profession. According to the public prosecutor, the current municipal councilor of Sant Adrià del Besòs and provincial deputy launched the attack with a megaphone and chanted, with other demonstrators, cries of “let’s go get them”, “moors shit”, “let’s burn down the inn”. .and “we will kill you”. For his part, the prosecutor is asking for two years in prison for the Espanyol supporter for racist cries and gestures towards the footballer.
In October 2023, the presidents of the criminal sections of the provincial courts of Catalonia have already agreed that the special forfeiture penalty provided for in hate crime “lacks autonomous character” compared to the prison sentence, which is why the latter is that which must determine the jurisdiction of criminal courts to prosecute cases.
The TSJC recalled that Congress reformed the criteria for jurisdiction to judge sexual crimes “without forgetting” hate crimes. “There is really no reason for the legislator to have chosen to establish that, in crimes against sexual freedom, only the duration of the custodial sentence would be taken into account and, on the other hand, that it “do not do exactly the same for crimes against fundamental rights,” reasoned the Catalan High Court when it ruled, in April this year, that jurisdiction to judge insults against Williams belonged to a criminal court in Barcelona.
The judges warned that it would be “incongruous” for crimes against sexual freedom, which carry heavier prison sentences, to be tried in the criminal court because of an accessory penalty of forfeiture, and that it would not The same was not true for hate crimes, for which the prison sentence is less.
The change to the Penal Code, added the TSJC, “was intended to avoid oversaturation of the bodies of the Provincial Court and to avoid unnecessary waits for those who appear.” Paradoxically, Barcelona Criminal Court 2’s insistence that the insults against Williams be tried in court has had the opposite effect: the footballer will have to wait even longer for justice.
