Throughout history we have witnessed desperate situations to denounce injustices by business owners or companies that are forced to close, whether for economic reasons, lack of hygiene or for other different reasons.
However, what has happened in the Asturian town of Grado had not been seen before, since the owner of a establishment in this municipality did not hesitate to ‘crucify himself’ to denounce the order to close ‘Trastevere’, the name of his gastrobar and the dream of his life that cost to come true.
The businessman, named Bernardo Álvarez, bought a premises in January 2020 with the intention of fulfilling the dream of founding ‘Trastevere’, to later face the bureaucracy to request the necessary permits from the Grado City Council, but also a Heritage of the Principality due to the restaurant being inside a listed building.
Eleven months later, the Heritage of the Principality of Asturias gave approval and granted the necessary permission to open the premises. The joy, however, was short-lived, as a complaint came from a neighbor alleging that this license contravened the council’s catalog of protected buildings.
With this, the nightmare would begin for Álvarez, who saw how he received a closure order after the final ruling of the chief magistrate of the Contentious-Administrative Court number 6 on September 29, with a period of ten days for the closure of Trastevere Delicatessen SL.
For all this, the owner opted for the particular protest of ‘crucifying himself’ on market day in Grado before the attentive gaze of the curious, who did not hesitate to record and take photos at the unprecedented sight of seeing a man dressed only in a sheet and carry a cross on his back, and later whip himself in the center.
“I see myself on the street. Not only me. There are five employees, apart from me who is also an employee of the company. I have a small child, a mortgage on the house, the one here, and I am going to have to return a subsidy,” Bernardo Álvarez commented to the local media that echoed what happened.
