Unpunished Catalanophobia on Social Networks

Today, Abril 28th, have been announced 16 arrests for “supporting terrorism” in social networks and, previously, llibertat.cat and other media have reported  that “Defensora del Pueblo” (“People’s Defendant”), Soledad Becerril, had asked the State’s General Prosecutor, Eduardo Torres-Dulce, to study if some of the opinions issued by Calafell’s resident, Carles Mañé, through social networks, would constitute a crime. He wrote on his Facebook, after a helicopter crash that killed four soldiers of the Spanish Air Service Rescue (SAR): “Latest news, a helicopter less and four gunmen countrysaviors less to conquer Catalonia”.

A few days ago the Justice Department has begun its own investigations, tracing Carles Mañé’s old comments on social networks and another of his writings that has arrived to State’s General Prosecutor (is a writing in which, using a foto of the coffins of the soldiers killed in the crash of Yak-42, he wrote “parade of the armed spanish forces on Hispanic Day, formerly known as day of the race. With the crisis they don’t carry tanks, now they’re carrying wooden boxes”).

This contrasts with the prosecution’s act of impunity towards the internauts that express catalanophobic opinions (or anti-independentists). In the last hours, there have been several examples of catalanophobia on the social networks, which will surely go unpunished, the best known being the big number of offensive messages that has received futbol player Gerard Piqué, simply for having written a tweet in Catalan, in the memory of coach “Tito” Vilanova. Another example of insults and mockery, that are made with complete impunity, can be found on the page “Bizarradas separatas”, where the last two hours has been derided the profile Ed Casteldefels and has been mocking its illness with the phrase “looking at his profile: Two newscasts”.