Whenever October 9 approaches, the city of Valencia experiences a double feeling, that of joy for celebrating the Day of the Valencian Community, which commemorates the victory and the entry of Jaume I in Valencia in 1238, and that of fear incidents to occur. There were many during the transition, some very serious; and in recent years the ritual of tension in the civic procession and episodes of ultra attacks such as those in 2017 on the afternoon procession called by nationalist groups have been perpetuated. In fact, this past Monday the trial that was to judge 28 ultras who attacked and assaulted the participants in the march that year was suspended.
The events mentioned can be framed in what the penal code classifies as hate crimes. In fact, these hate crimes have grown 55% more than five years ago, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior for 2022, and Valencia is the fifth autonomous region where they are registered the most (188 out of a total of 1,869). But an interesting fact is that ideological differences have been reduced in recent years in Spain and the Valencian Community. Not so the crimes of racism and homophobia, which represent 70% of the facts investigated in our autonomy compared to 43% in Spain as a whole.
The Valencian prosecutor’s office attributes this increase in crimes of racism and homophobia to two possible factors: “to the fact that more are reported or to the fact that more occur, or surely a mixture of the two,” according to the Hate Crimes prosecutor, Susana Gisbert. . It cannot be ruled out that the resources that the prosecutor’s office makes available to victims have allowed attacks that were previously kept silent to now be reported. However, Susana Gisbert also states that there are many crimes that remain unreported and that there are groups such as the disabled or gypsies who still find it difficult to file a complaint when they are victims of an attack.
Anna López, doctor in Political Science and Journalist, and one of the leading experts in Spain on the rise of the extreme right, points out that the figures on crimes of racism and homophobia “allow us to make a better diagnosis of the motivation, profile of the victims and perpetrators of these events that violate the dignity of people and make visible a crime that only 1 in 10 victims report, the majority of vulnerable groups that do not dare to take the step out of fear.
It also helps us, he adds, to advance judicially from the hate crime prosecutor’s offices, such as in the cases of racism on soccer fields and also for ideological reasons perpetrated by the extreme right on October 9, 2017, whose response was rapid. and exemplary. It was a relevant judicial blow against the extreme right and the certain impunity that they have enjoyed in the Valencian Community.
This researcher concludes that “there is still much to improve in the fight against hate crimes, but judicially a change has been seen in the Valencian Community, something key to dismantling the extreme right. There is still pedagogy on the part of the political parties, among those who find forces that still do not condemn the attacks that occurred on October 9”.
