Man acquitted for threatening to “beat a young man straight” in a Barcelona bar on Pride Day

The Barcelona Court has acquitted a man who was accused of attacking a young man with homophobic insults, threatening to beat him up “for the way he dressed” in a fast food restaurant in Barcelona, ​​coinciding with Gay Pride Day, despite calling his attitude “narrow-minded” and “intolerant”. In its ruling, the third section of the Court maintains that there is not enough evidence of a hate crime in the conduct of the perpetrator of the insults, who faced an 18-month prison sentence, or in that of the other accused, a security guard for whom the Prosecutor’s Office requested nine months for tolerating the attack. The court adds that the conduct could constitute a minor offence of threats, but that no one has charged him on those grounds, in a case in which the victim did not file a complaint.

The incident, recorded on video that later went viral, occurred in June 2019 at a McDonald’s very close to Plaça Catalunya in Barcelona, ​​where two young men who had just returned from a Gay Pride celebration entered. The accused began to berate the victim for the way he was dressing, which led to a verbal confrontation between the two, so the security guard at the establishment went towards them “to prevent the incident from becoming serious”, the sentence maintains. The court assures that it has been able to verify in the video the “aggressiveness” with which the accused spoke to the victim and his “anger” focused on the young man’s way of dressing, but it rules out that the expressions he uttered reach the minimum degree of harm required by the criminal type of hate crime.

“These are, as we say, unfortunate and reprehensible expressions from a civic and moral point of view, but not only do they lack the substance to constitute the less serious crime for which the prosecutor accuses him, but the motivation is not focused on the sexual condition of the offended person,” the court argues. In this regard, the court recalls that the accused indicated on several occasions to the victim that “he did not care about her sexual condition and that he only reprimanded her for the way she was dressed,” which is proven by the fact that he did not direct his “verbal violence” at the companion of the young man attacked. In fact, the accused insisted in the trial that his insults were not due to the victim’s homosexual condition, but rather because of his way of dressing, which he considered inappropriate in the presence of minors such as his daughter.

For the court, “this reflects narrow-minded thinking that is open to criticism from the point of view of tolerance and respect for others, as essential bases for peaceful coexistence,” but the homophobic intention that the prosecution attributed to the accused is ruled out. The court does consider that the accused uttered “threatening expressions” – such as “it is the day to throw punches” or “I am going to make you heterosexual by hitting you” – that could constitute a minor offence of threats, but it cannot convict him because at no time was any charge brought for these acts.

Regarding the security guard on trial, who the prosecution accused of a hate crime by omission, the court maintains that “far from abstaining and watching the incident impassively”, he approached both of them and put his arm in front of them to prevent the aggressor from getting closer to the complainant. In this sense, the court considers that the security guard “at no time favoured the foul-mouthed attitude” of the other accused, but rather “tried and succeeded in preventing the conflict from escalating”. The Court also recognises that the dissemination of the video on Twitter and the “media uproar” unleashed caused an affectation to the victim, but emphasises that the accused had no participation in the dissemination nor did they take advantage of it to spread hate speech against LGBT groups. “The episode was limited to an incident in a place that was not even very busy and no one joined in the actions of the accused, nor did he incite anyone to attack those two people”, adds the sentence, which the prosecution can appeal.

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