Last Sunday morning, a driver of the N1 bus line operated by the Tusgsal company and which makes the journey in the city of Barcelona from the Zona Franca to Trinitat Nova said enough was enough. Tired of putting up with a passenger who would not stop harassing her, addressing her repeatedly with words of a macho nature such as “queen” or “beautiful”, she decided, in a show of courage, or perhaps recklessness, to stop the vehicle in the middle of off the street and eject him from the vehicle. It is quite possible that a similar action has been repeated on more than one occasion on a night line, such as the N1. But this time it has come out because someone decided to record the scene. And of course, the video has gone viral. Roger Pons, 27, was traveling on that bus and immortalized the moment, and La Vanguardia has spoken with him.
He had gotten on at the Tetuán stop to go to the Sant Pau hospital. It was approximately 4:45 a.m. Sunday morning. Two stops later a man got into the vehicle, “a little over 30 years old and it was clear that he was not in the best condition.” From the beginning, he stood next to the driver’s position, and it didn’t take long for him to address her. He began by asking her, says Roger, if the bus stopped at a specific place. “It was difficult to understand him, it was difficult for him to vocalize because of the situation he was in.” But later he decided to go further.
Suddenly, and without warning, he inserted his head through the small side hole that does not cover the screen that protects the driver to blurt out to the woman that she was “the most beautiful girl” he had ever seen. The driver asked him not to refer to her in those terms again. “But he didn’t stop. He kept questioning her with words of the queen type â€. Until there was a moment when she ran out of patience and she blurted out: “Either you go to the back of the bus and shut up, or you get off right here.”
He reluctantly agreed, “but without ceasing to call her prettyâ€, and all this while the bus was running. He chose to sit behind her. From there, however, he did not stop scolding her. Suddenly, she stopped the bus dead in the middle of the street. “That’s when I started recording as a precaution, I didn’t know what could get messed up.” Luckily, Roger argues, the alleged stalker “was calm” and “didn’t offer much resistance” when she yelled at him to get off the bus. After thinking about it for a few moments, he obeyed.
Roger, who works nights, decided to upload the video to social media on Sunday afternoon. He did not think, he says, that it would have such an impact. Nor did he think that the alleged attacker would contact him. But he has done it. “I saw on Instagram that he had about 30 missed calls, I didn’t know that they could call you on this social network.” There was also a message, and it was from him: “It’s me. It was very past. My wife is going to be upset when she sees this. Please delete it.”
Roger didn’t answer him. Another message came later, he says. “Listen to me, I am being harassed, they are humiliating me. I ask you to delete it or I’m going to go through legal channels, because this is a crime.” He says that he has been advised and that they have assured him that he has nothing to worry about, that the recording had been made “in a public place and that he was recording an uncomfortable situation that could serve as evidence.”
The company, for the moment, has opened an investigation to analyze what happened. The driver appears to be fine. Who is not so much is Roger. He says that he is “on alert” when he goes down the street. “If I come across him, I don’t know how he will react. But Barcelona is very big.” He also intends to contact the driver. “I haven’t had time to look for it, honestly. But I want to find her to ask her how she is, “he concludes.
