"Today I see the light." After a long ordeal, Paula Bonet breathed a little calmer this Monday. Her stalker must enter a psychiatric hospital. Víctor Galindo, who stole her peace with her constant harassment, will not be able to approach the writer or communicate with her for the next five years. In a sentence that has been made public today, the judge condemns Galindo for the crimes of harassment, threats, coercion and breach of precautionary measure. It is the end of a nightmare for the artist.
The harassment started in July 2019, according to the account of the proven facts contained in the sentence. "Galindo began to impose her presence and seek Bonet's proximity by going to the place where she developed her work as a writer, painter and illustrator with the intention of seeing her and learning about her."
Bonet did not respond to the man's requirements, but he "reiterated his interest in meeting her and talking to her" and showed up again and again at the workshop. One morning “he repeatedly knocked on the glass of the entrance door asking for her insistently, raising and lowering the blind and pressing his lips and hands to the glass giving him kisses while looking at Mrs. Bonet who chose to record the scene with her mobile phone ”.
In parallel, the stalker "attended Bonet's events and public acts such as a book presentation, exhibitions, a talk, a concert... he either questioned her with questions or made her uncomfortable by repeatedly walking past her or staring at her." And as if that were not enough, "he sent her several emails claiming her attention."
With the confinement due to the coronavirus crisis, the physical harassment ceased, but Galindo, who has acknowledged the facts, “continued to contact Bonet through emails, Twitter and Instagram with unrelated, disturbing and disturbing content, revealing his obsession for her and her intention to maintain some kind of relationship”.
With the end of the restrictions, the stalker returned to the fray. “On one occasion he left an envelope at the entrance of the workshop with the name Víctor and the expression rapist written on it, containing a plastic doll in the shape of an eel cut into pieces.” He also "wrote a Twitter thread addressed to Bonet in which he came to express: 'You'd better not set foot in my city again because if I come across you I'm going to strangle you and dismember you to please all the miserable bums who inhabit the streets of Barcelona . You will see what a feast, I will leave the eyes for the last and I will keep the nipples in a carmañola”.
The judge also considers it proven that the stalker “suffered at the time of these events from a pathological disorder, a disease diagnosed as capsulated erotomania delirium, which completely conditioned his will. He lived in a parallel reality that invaded his thinking and his behavior to irrational limits, making it impossible for him to act according to a normal understanding”.
Consequently, the ruling orders that the stalker be "interned in an appropriate center for a maximum time of one year and nine months." It prohibits Galindo from "approaching Bonet, his place of work, residence or any place where he is at a distance of 500 meters or from communicating with her by any means for a period of five years." Finally, Galindo must compensate the artist with 3,940 euros.
