Zoom Image
Another case of sexual assault causes outrage in Spain (symbolic image)
Photo: www.viennaslide.com / imago images/viennaslide
Spanish police have arrested a man who grabbed a journalist's buttocks during a live broadcast.
The presenter Isa Balado had reported on Tuesday for the channel Cuatro about a robbery in Madrid, when a man approached her from behind, touched her buttocks and asked her which TV station she worked for.
Balado explained that she was in the middle of a live broadcast and tried to proceed with her report, but the presenter, Nacho Abad, insisted that she put the man in front of the camera. She confronted him and explained to him that she had been trying to do her job.
Perpetrator lingered nearby
As he walked away, he tried to touch her head, but the presenter ducked away. The man continued to linger on the street and spoke to her again. He had heard her accusations that she should "tell the truth".
Balado asked to interrupt the broadcast because she didn't want to pay more attention to the man.
Police said in a message on X, formerly Twitter, that a man had been arrested for sexually assaulting a female reporter live on air.
The incident comes shortly after the kissing scandal involving the head of the Football Association, Luis Rubiales, which has caused a wave of outrage in Spain.
Spain's Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz said the case of the journalist and the man who harassed her should not go unpunished. "It's machismo that makes female journalists suffer sexual assaults like this, and the attackers are unrepentant on camera," she wrote on X. Equality Minister Irene Montero declared: "Non-consensual touching is sexual violence, and we say: Stop impunity."