• Courts Charge Pablo Casado for ensuring that they do not let Catalan students go to the bathroom "because they speak in Spanish"

For more than an hour, the former leader of PP, Pablo Casado, testified before the Court of Instruction 29 of Barcelona accused of insults, slander and hate crime by ensuring that teachers in Catalan schools had instructions not to let children who speak Spanish go to the bathroom. Specifically, the judicial procedure arises after a complaint from the Generalitat against Casado for his statements in Galicia at the end of 2021 when he was then president of the Popular Party.

In an act, he assured that the teachers of the Catalan schools are forbidden to authorize students to go to the bathroom if they ask for it in Spanish, as well as that "the children of the national police and civil guards are pointed out in class and it is said that they cannot be integrated" or that there are children who are put "stones in the backpack" for speaking Spanish in the playground. The Generalitat considered that it was a crime and that is why it filed a complaint.

In his statement, Casado admitted his words were "lawful" and that he took the information from articles "contrasted" by several media, such as EL MUNDO, but admitted that he did not authenticate their content. However, he explained that if the Generalitat had not sued these media for defaming "I give the news for good". He also explained that at the time of making the statements there had been possible harassment of the family of a minor in a school in Canet de Mar who had asked for 25% in Spanish and who even spoke with the girl by videoconference.

Before the judge he also narrated other similar cases of alleged accusation to students in the classrooms such as the complaint of children of Civil Guard agents in an institute of Sant Andreu de la Barca after 1-O. Casado added that his intention was not to attack teachers but that he wanted to denounce "the slogans of the parties that occupy power" in the Generalitat.

He also remarked that his statements were protected by the "parliamentary inviolability" as all deputies or senators have when they make them and, despite losing the status currently, he remains protected. "I would do it again," Casado added before the judge who acknowledged his intervention in the act in Galicia, as stated in the recording provided to this procedure.

The Supreme Court initially filed the complaint of the Generalitat when Casado lost his status as a deputy but another was presented before a court in Barcelona since the Government of Aragonés considered that the statements of the former leader of the PP were false and only sought to "attack" the Catalan education system.

According to The Trust Project criteria

Learn more

  • Generalitat of Catalonia
  • Galicia
  • Barcelona
  • PP
  • Pablo Casado
  • THE WORLD
  • Civil Guard
  • Supreme Court
  • Justice
  • Secondary education