Mrs. Ponsatí, and also you, Mr. Puigdemont, so far you will know that the association that I represent – Movement Against Intolerance – has filed a complaint with the State Attorney General’s Office for the alleged commission of a hate speech crime.
Why? For his despicable “tweet” on Sunday. The one that you published, Mrs. Ponsatí, and that you, Mr. Puigdemont, later retweeted. We presume that his words are placed in the criminal category that sanctions those who “harm the dignity of people through actions that involve humiliation, contempt or discredit of any of the groups referred to in the previous section, or part of them. , or of any person determined by reason of their belonging to them for racist, anti-Semitic or other reasons related to ideology, religion or beliefs, family situation, the membership of their members to an ethnic group, race or nation, their national origin, their sex, sexual orientation or identity, for reasons of gender, illness or disability… ”.
YOU TWO HAVE MADE FUN OF THE DEATH OF HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE Making fun of the deaths of hundreds of people, the tragedy of thousands and the general commotion, outrages and disgusts us all. You two have. They have been portrayed in a very clear personal way. Many people reproached him. A true avalanche. And disgust reached us all the “good people”. You, Mrs. Ponsatí, were slow to apologize. And it was after learning of our complaint to the State Attorney General. It was published by this digital legal newspaper, Confilegal, at 11 in the morning. But you did not speak until almost 2 in the afternoon. Through his Twitter account. The same route he had spoken the day before and which he hastened to erase when he saw that everyone literally came at him. Your apologies, Mrs. Ponsatí, are insufficient. And your silence, Monsieur Puigdemont, speaks for itself. It is not enough to try to hide in a thread where he begins by assuring that he has three sisters living in Madrid and that his will was to make “a sarcastic and indignant criticism of the management of the crisis by the Government”. Nobody believes it, Mrs. Ponastí. No one. It is often said that one is a slave to his words and owner of his silences. You will be a slave to these words until the end of your days. Everyone will remember her for that.
RESPECT FOR THE DIGNITY OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS For us, from the Movement Against Intolerance, respect for the equal dignity of all human beings constitutes the foundation of democratic society. The contempt for an entire people, the contempt that you have expressed in four words – “From Madrid to Heaven”, when almost two hundred people died in Madrid due to the coronavirus – is incompatible with respect for human dignity. So it may be considered necessary “to sanction or even prevent all forms of expression that spread, incite, promote or justify hatred based on intolerance”, as stated by Courts such as the Spanish Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights. Mrs. Ponsatí, you wanted to apologize to “people in good faith, who have felt hurt” and respond “to the interested interpretations” of your tweet. His partner, Puigdemont, has not even done so. We honestly don’t understand that about “people in good faith.” And more in a context where your “sarcastic” irony lies in the fact that those people who are suffering death and pain today, to which you refer in regards to your promotion “From Madrid to Heaven”, are precisely those people in good faith who you refer. You and Mr Puigdemont can criticize what political management wants. We live in freedom. But with this “tweet” they have crossed all the existing red lines.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION DOES NOT COVER THE IMPUNITY OF AGGRESSION Ponsati, keep it clear, very clear – and you too, Puigdemont -: freedom of expression does not protect impunity for aggression. The dense load of hostility located in those four words that humiliates, by way of ironic vexation, as the canons of the best propaganda machines command, has no excuse. And it must be sanctioned. We firmly believe it. It can’t be free. His apologies have sounded false and forced. In our opinion, they result in his negative vision of Madrid society. Apologies that you were not accompanied by you, Puigdemont, your former boss, escape partner and tweet. I remind you, Mrs. Ponsatí, that constitutional jurisprudence has highlighted both the preeminent nature of the right to freedom of expression in democratic systems, and its limited character when it conflicts with other constitutional rights or interests: “As it happens, for example, with those expressions that are a manifestation of hate speech ”. Because, from our point of view, that is what you did.