Two of the most relevant racism trials are paralyzed due to doubts among Barcelona judges about which court should hold the hearing. This is the case that must prosecute an Espanyol fan for the racist shouts against the Athletic Club de Bilbao forward Iñaki Williams and the case for the xenophobic attack on a juvenile center in which a provincial leader of Vox is accused, the historical neo-Nazi Jordi de la Fuente.
There are at least two other proceedings affected by the judicial disagreement. In summary, the discrepancy is that the Barcelona Court considers that the jurisdiction to judge these hate crimes lies with the criminal courts, while, on the contrary, the criminal courts believe that it is with the Court. Although the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) ruled that it was the criminal court that should judge the racist insults to the footballer, two criminal judges have insisted on declaring themselves incompetent and have sent the case back to the higher court.
The racist shouts occurred in the match between Espanyol and Athletic Club in Cornellà (Barcelona) in January 2020, while the attempted assault on a minor center in El Masnou (Barcelona) in which De la Source occurred 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 instead of the Barcelona Court. But the surprise has come once the cases have reached the criminal courts. Two different magistrates have declared themselves incompetent to hold the trials, so the hearings remain undated. Except for an unforeseen acceleration of the togados, they will not be celebrated until well into 2025 or 2026. More than five years after the events.
According to legal sources, Criminal Court 2 of Barcelona, which had the hearing of the trial for the insults to Williams set for November 26, declared itself incompetent to hold the trial in an order from the beginning of October and rescheduled it. submit to 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 to the footballer, that in reality the court competent to do so was a criminal court.
Other sources of the case in which the provincial leader of Vox is accused explain that history has been repeated in the case that must judge the assault on the juvenile center: the 5th section of the Court declined its jurisdiction, the TSJC endorsed that the trial It was held in a criminal court, but Criminal Court 2 of Mataró sent it back to the Court last September. One of the defenses of the accused far-rightists has filed an appeal, which is still pending processing and resolution.
The conflict over hate crimes
The Criminal Procedure Law states that criminal courts must judge cases for crimes that carry prison sentences of no more than five years or other penalties of no more than ten years. A good part of the hate crimes were being tried in the Provincial Courts, since several of the modalities of article 510 of the Penal Code (which is formally called a crime against fundamental rights and public freedoms) could lead to penalties of disqualification of more of ten years.
The reform of the Penal Code of what is known as the ‘only yes means yes’ law entailed a change in the criteria for attributing the jurisdiction of trials to the fact that only the prison sentence (and not disqualification) should be contemplated to determine whether the cause It had to be tried in a criminal court or in the higher instance, the Audiencia.
As the penalties for disqualification for hate crimes are higher than those of prison, the Provincial Courts used to keep a good part of the trials. But the change in the Penal Code meant that only prison sentences had to be taken into account, which in hate crimes are limited to a maximum of four years, which determines that the jurisdiction lies with the criminal courts.
This happens in both cases. The Prosecutor’s Office asks De la Fuente for two years and two months in prison and five years of disqualification from exercising any educational profession. According to the Public Ministry, the now councilor in Sant Adrià del Besòs and provincial deputy went to the assault with a megaphone and chanted along with more protesters, shouts of “let’s get them”, “shitty Moors”, “let’s burn the hostel”. and “we are going to kill you.” For his part, the prosecutor demands two years in prison from the Espanyol fan for racist shouts and gestures against the footballer.
In October 2023, the presidents of the criminal sections of the Provincial Courts of Catalonia already agreed that the penalty of special disqualification contemplated in the hate crime “lacks autonomous nature” with respect to the prison sentence, so it is The latter is the one that must determine the jurisdiction of the criminal courts to prosecute cases.
The TSJC recalled that Congress reformed the jurisdiction criteria to judge sexual crimes “without forgetting” hate crimes. “There is really no reason why the legislator would 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, not do exactly the same for crimes against fundamental rights,” reasoned the Catalan high court when it decided, in April of this year, that the jurisdiction to judge the insults to Williams belonged to a criminal court in Barcelona.
The judges warned that it would be “an incongruity” if crimes against sexual freedom, which have harsher prison sentences, were tried by the criminal court as a consequence of an accessory penalty of disqualification, and that the same did not happen with the crimes of hate, whose prison sentence is lower.
The change in the Penal Code, added the TSJC, “was based on avoiding oversaturation of the Provincial Court bodies and avoiding unnecessary waits for people who report.” Paradoxically, the insistence of Barcelona’s criminal court 2 that the insults against Williams be judged in the Court has had the opposite effect: the footballer will have to wait even longer to obtain justice.
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