On New Year’s Eve, in one of the now usual but increasingly minority and radicalized concentrations in front of the PSOE headquarters on Ferraz Street against the agreements of that party with the independence movement, the protesters beat and hanged a piñata doll of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. The action has received a radical condemnation by the PSOE, which has described it as fascist violence and has gone so far as to affirm that it could constitute a hate crime. More lukewarm, however, has been the condemnation by the PP, something that has deserved reproach from the socialists in what already seems like a classic of Spanish politics, that is, asking the opponent to censor actions for which he is not responsible. This, together with the fact that those in question demand the same behavior for similar actions when they themselves are the target and have not deserved the same reproach from their opponents, reveals the double yardstick that some political leaders use to judge this type of behavior.
The action carried out by a group of protesters linked to the far-right youth organization Revuelta is not a New Year’s rite or a simple joke, but is linked to a type of protest that has been widespread in recent years and that, no matter how much each other accuse each other, It is not the exclusive property of any political group. In fact, it was not so long ago that sectors of the left or pro-independence groups simulated decapitate dolls of Mariano Rajoy or the Kingthat members of the LGTBI movement in the celebration of Pride Day beat up figures of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Santiago Abascal or that in a town in Seville a man was set on fire doll that represented Carles Puigdemont.
These behaviors, all of them without exception, suffer from an undoubted bad taste, contribute to a dangerous dehumanization of the adversary, can foster tension and without a doubt, no matter how symbolic it may be, they entail a high dose of violence. All these reasons make them hateful and therefore reprehensible both for those who execute them and for those who excuse, justify or minimize them, as the leader of Vox has done, for example. However, this does not mean that they are a crime and they cannot be considered to incite hatred beyond the hatred that already exists among those who exercise them. Rather, they are behaviors that must be framed in the exercise of a fundamental right such as freedom of expression. Therefore, only in the event that these actions were accompanied by explicit calls to make the performances a reality, that is, to attack the physical integrity of people, whether or not they are political leaders, or to incite discrimination against certain groups, would they be criminally prosecutable. As established by a Supreme Court ruling in 2017, a criminal distinction must be made “between hatred that incites the commission of crimes, hatred that sows the seeds of confrontation and that erodes the essential values of coexistence, and hatred that is identified with animosity or resentment. Those who promote and applaud any of these forms of debasement of coexistence may be politically disapproved. But It is not coherent to use them as a throwing weapon when the level of tolerance for them varies not depending on the facts, but depending on who carries them out.