Our Catalonian correspondent Pampasnasturtium sends a translated article with the latest cultural enrichment news from Barcelona, followed by an overview of the political context in Catalonia.
First, a translated article from La Vanguardia:
Sexual gang-assault on a young woman in Santa Coloma de Gramenet [suburb of Barcelona]
November 11, 2018
Local police arrested 14 young men, also accused of stabbing her partner
[Photo caption (not shown) : Two of the attackers harassed the young woman inside the subway premises, at Can Peixauet station.]
Today local police in Santa Coloma de Gramenet arrested 14 young men accused of sexually assaulting a young woman in the town and stabbing her partner, as announced by Cadena Ser radio station. The incident took place at about 6am. Two of the attackers harassed the young woman inside the subway premises, and apparently they and their gang-mates groped her within the elevator of the Can Peixauet metro station.
The attackers are young men formerly under the guardianship of the regional Catalan government [ex-”tutelados“]*, all of them of Maghrebi ethnicity. According to police sources, they’re the inhabitants of a squat house located on Santa Coloma’s Generalitat Avenue, where they were arrested yesterday in the morning. The house was sealed off.
The detainees had previously been arrested by Santa Coloma’s local police a couple of times during recent days, because of their alleged involvement in different violent thefts. Most of them are allegedly affected by scabies, which has led the police cars they were transported in, as well as the police station and its cells, to have to be disinfected. Santa Coloma’s Town Council stated that joint action by local police and Mossos d’Esquadra [regional Catalan police] has made it possible to arrest all of those involved in this sexual assault.
The young [female] victim’s [male] partner was taken to Esperit Sant hospital to be assisted, and his present medical condition is non-life-threatening.
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Translator’s note: not mentioned in this particular report, they’re known as “mena”, that is, “menores extranjeros no acompañados”, unaccompanied foreign minors. The fact that now it is stated they’re no longer under such guardianship means they’re not legally minors anymore.
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Aftermath of the tragicomedy, so far
by Pampasnasturtium
On Monday evening, a minor (one of two alleged minors out of the fifteen arrested, instead of the fourteen initially reported) escaped.
Instead of boarding (as he was supposed to do) the van that would take them both from court (where the attorney had just set them free) to one of the regional-government Infancy and Adolescence Affairs Department premises, he just ran away.
The other minor complied.
On Tuesday, the acting judge jailed without bail five of the (adult) attackers, all of them accused of sexual assault against the young woman, and three of them also stand accused of attempted murder, with a knife, against the victim’s partner.
(Source of the above)
On Tuesday some 500 persons marched against “all forms of” male/patriarchal violence (“violencia machista”), to show “solidarity” with the victims, to call for a harmonious living-together, AND against racism and against “stigmatizing the young”.
A façade of officialdom and institutional character was given by the openly stated support and organization of the march by Santa Coloma’s Town Council, the local Federation of Neighbors and Neighboresses (sic) Associations (“Federació d’Associacions de Veïns i Veïnes”), and the local Women’s Associations Council.
Such organizations denounced “the emerging signs of racism and xenophobia visible on social networks” against young immigrants, which are “an incendiary discourse and endanger the very coexistence and security of our male and female (sic) children”.
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