A judge has archived the case he opened following a government complaint against former PP leader Pablo Casado for allegations that in Catalonia, Spanish-speaking students were being prevented from going to the toilet , and concluded that this was “misguided” and “can be dismissed”. These comments are subject to the right to freedom of expression. In a decision brought by El Confidencial, to which EFE had access, the head of Barcelona’s No. 29 General Court files the case after Casado, in his March 20 statement that he was under investigation, claimed he had his statements up based on what was published in the press without checking it and that its purpose was to denounce the government’s language policy. The government warned this Tuesday of “impunity and disregard” for the “manipulations” of the Catalan language by sections of the right and extreme right and is already preparing an appeal to lodge your complaint.
The government sued Casado for some of his statements in a law of the PP in Galicia in December 2021, amid the controversy following the ruling that imposed 25% of teaching in Spanish, in which he assured that in Catalonia there were “teachers” with the Instruction not to let children go to the bathroom because they speak Spanish” and that some students “get bricks in their backpacks” for using that language on the playground.
In the judge’s view, the remarks attributed to Casado in the government’s complaint, accusing the former popular leader of defamation, slander and incitement to hatred, no matter how “misguided and dismissable,” cannot be considered a criminal offense because they are protected by the freedom of opinion and expression enshrined in the Constitution. The judge also points out that in these proceedings the existence of a crime of incitement to hatred or violence has not been sufficiently established. In his filing order, the judge recalled that when Casado lost his status as a taxpayer, the Supreme Court dismissed the complaint in an order that he now supports, finding that moderation was warranted in the face of “more or less exaggerated” statements be invoked, but the interference of criminal law “must be measured in a context that does not forget the political dispute underlying the facts.”
According to the government, with these demonstrations Casado tried to publicly disparage the dignity of teachers, their work and the Catalan education system itself, and to incite hatred or violence, as they could “clearly” incite hostility towards the people of Catalonia for having their own official decreed language. For his part, Casado argued from the outset 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 suffer in certain contexts.
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