A judge has archived the case that he opened as a result of a complaint by the Government against the former leader of the PP Pablo Casado for affirming that in Catalonia students who speak Spanish are prevented from going to the bathroom, concluding that, however “misguided and rejectable” they may be These comments are protected by freedom of expression. In a car, ahead of The confidential and to which EFE has had access, the head of the trial court number 29 of Barcelona archives the case, after Casado alleged in his statement as being investigated on March 20 that he based his statements on what was published in the press, without verifying it, and that its object was to denounce the linguistic policy of the Government. The Government has warned this Tuesday about the “impunity and contempt” of the “manipulations” of the Catalan by sectors of the right and the extreme right, and is already preparing an appeal to file his complaint.
The Government sued Casado for some of his statements in an act of the PP in Galicia in December 2021, in the midst of the controversy following the sentence that imposed 25% of classes in Spanish, in which he assured that in Catalonia “ there are teachers with instructions not to let children go to the bathroom because they speak Spanish” and that some students are given “stones in their backpacks” for using that language in the playground.
According to the judge, no matter how “misguided and rejectable” the comments attributed to Casado in the Government’s complaint – which accused the former popular leader of libel and slander and incitement to hatred – cannot be considered a crime since they are protected by the freedom of opinion and expression enshrined in the Constitution. Likewise, the judge points out that in this procedure the existence of a crime of incitement to hatred or violence has not been sufficiently proven. In his file order, the judge recalls that the Supreme Court rejected the complaint -when Casado lost his status as a taxpayer- in a resolution that he now endorses and that established that in the face of “more or less exaggerated” expressions, moderation may be claimed, but the intervention of criminal law “must be measured in a context in which the political contention underlying the facts is not forgotten.”
According to the Government, with these demonstrations Casado tried to publicly belittle the dignity of teachers, their work and the Catalan educational system itself and incite hatred or violence, since “clearly” they could incite hostility against the population of Catalonia for have their own official language. For his part, Casado claimed from the beginning that his statements were protected by freedom of expression and that he limited himself to criticizing the lack of protection that, according to some journalistic information, Spanish-speaking children would suffer in certain contexts.
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