A waiter from a Benidorm bar has been condemned to prison for two homophobic attacks on clients. The punishment includes six months in jail for the homophobic slurs and two more fines for two charges of minor violence. In a plea deal, the defendant admitted to the crimes and pleaded guilty to the hate crime. He agreed to compensate each of the two victims 440 euros for their injuries and emotional distress.
Shortly after midnight on October 30th, 2022, a gay couple went into a pub on the central Avenida del Mediterráneo in Benidorm, where the defendant was working as a waiter. The first thing the defendant said to them as they walked in was, “Hey, are you faggots?” The court found that the defendant made these comments because he was biased toward the sexual orientation of his victims and wanted to humiliate, belittle, affront their dignity, and hurt their bodies.
In this case, the defendant said, “There go the faggots,” with contemptuous motions as the pair departed the restaurant. This insulting comment was said out loud so that everyone in the bar could hear it. He didn’t only make fun of them; as he got to the door, he hit one of them in the face, sending him to the ground. Once he was on the ground, he started kicking him and even dragging him by the leg. When the other person in the relationship sought to halt the attack, the defendant hit him in the temple with his skull.
The two victims were hurt, but not badly enough to need medical treatment. They merely got medical help.
The punishments
The verdict makes it clear that these actions are small assaults, attacks on moral integrity, and hate crimes based on discrimination, since the victims’ sexual orientation was the reason for the attacks and insults, which damaged their dignity and peace of mind. This example shows how severe attacks based on homophobic bias are, both because of the harm they do to the victims’ bodies and the harm they do to their morals. The hate crimes get a six-month prison sentence and a fine of €1,080. The assault gets two more fines, one for one month and one for fifteen days, at a rate of €6 per day (for a total of €270 each). The offender admitted to the crimes before the trial and paid the victims what they wanted, so when the case got to the Provincial Court, all parts of the deal were approved. The decision is final and can’t be challenged.
In the province of Alicante, one in four hate crimes is motivated by homophobia. The Ministry of the Interior says that the province has been getting between 40 and 50 hate crime reports every year for the past few years. Racism, xenophobia, and homophobia are some of the key reasons why these hate crimes happen. The report from 2024, which came out at the end of last year, found 528 hate crimes that were connected to sexual orientation or gender identity. This made it the second most common reason for hate crimes, following racism and xenophobia, which were the most common. But altogether, these kinds of crimes went down by 13.8% from the year before. During that time, police looked into 1,955 hate crimes and other instances around the country.
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