The incident that occurred on Thursday at the Benicalap municipal swimming pool, where two employees prohibited a veiled woman from entering with her children, has raised a notable political uproar in Valencia. The events led to the arrest of the two workers from the company that manages the facility and the announcement of an investigation by the City Council.
The complainant and the defendants agree on the essential fact: the woman tried to access the pool and the two men did not let her pass. She, a Saharawi who has been in Spain for 24 years, told the Levante newspaper that she informed the employees that only the children, ages 5 and 8, were going to bathe, but that she was seriously insulted with racist expressions: "Go to your fucking country, or "what disgusting clothes you wear". They argue that they limited themselves to preventing her from entering because the regulations prohibit bathing in non-swimwear.
For the former mayor Joan Ribó, from Compromís, "this happens when hatred and racism become strong and enter the institutions", as he published on his social networks. It is just one example of the many that, from the left, have linked the incident with the new political times: a Council in which Vox directs three ministries and a town hall in which the popular mayoress, María José Catalá, required the support of the extreme right to access the position.
It was not her, but the acting mayor, Julia Climent, who yesterday, after the request for explanations that the PSOE formulated in the morning, addressed the main opposition party to "stop politicizing" such a "sensitive" issue. . What needs to be done, she suggested, is to "let work" the agencies that are investigating the event. Climent responded to the request of the socialist Javier Mateo, so that a meeting of all the parties be called with the aim of dealing with the issue.
The acting mayoress explained that "the National Police is already on the matter from the outset but, in addition, the municipal government has immediately launched an investigation into the concessionaire through the Municipal Sports Foundation, the Sports Service itself and the Office of non-discrimination of the City Council”. Once the matter is studied, "the conclusions will be reported to all parties in a timely manner," Climent said.
The socialist councilor Javier Mateo had demanded that the mayoress of Valencia, María José Catalá, hold an urgent meeting in the morning to inform the opposition groups about the incident. "Given the seriousness of what happened in Benicalap and after the arrest of two workers from the concessionary company for an alleged hate crime, from the PSOE we demand that the PP and the Councilor for Sports call a meeting as soon as possible to inform exhaustively to the opposition about what happened,” Mateo explained.
The socialist demanded to be informed "about the actions that the municipal government is going to undertake to prevent incidents of this type from occurring again."
The detainees are two men aged 32 and 50 who were declared last Thursday as alleged perpetrators of a crime against fundamental rights and public liberties. Once they had exposed their version of the facts, they were released with the warning to appear before the judicial authority when required to do so, according to what was reported to the National Police.
