Catalan teacher arrested by Spain’s Guardia Civil for allegedly spreading hate speech on social media

According to Pallars Digital and the Catalan News Agency, Guardia Civil officers arrested a secondary school teacher in Tremp last Thursday for allegedly spreading hate speech on social media.

In an interview with Manel Riu, the teacher stated that three Guardia Civil officers came to the school looking for him yesterday morning, though he was not there at that time. Finding him at home, they asked him to accompany them to their barracks in Tremp.

Riu drove his own car to the police station, accompanied by one of the police officers. Once there, he was informed that he was under arrest for the crime of spreading hate speech on social media. However, Riu exercised his right to remain silent and was released after signing certain documents alongside his lawyer. He is expected to appear before an examining magistrate at a later date.

According to Riu, the Spanish officers asked him whether he had posted anything on social media on 7 October. During his interrogation, Riu claims he was not shown any Facebook messages or specific tweets, and that the charges laid against him are "generic." Nevertheless, he does not deny that he has "strongly criticized" the Spanish government, police and security forces in some of these posts, going on to say that the "level of violence" exhibited by the Guardia Civil and the Spanish Police on 1 October led him to write that they "had behaved in a savage, inhuman manner." However, he added: "I said it, in exactly the same way as many people have".