He claimed that eight men had inscribed him with a
"queer"
knife
on his buttocks: the young man who had claimed to be the victim of a violent homophobic attack in the middle of Madrid, provoking indignation in Spain, retracted and explained that the facts were agreed, authorities said on Wednesday.
Read alsoSpain: indignation after a violent homophobic aggression
"The young man who lodged a complaint on Sunday claiming to have been the victim of an assault in the Malasaña district of Madrid decided to rectify his initial statement and declared that the alleged injuries had been granted"
, told AFP sources at the Ministry of the Interior. The 20-year-old claimed he had been attacked by eight masked people in the lobby of his apartment building in Madrid's very fashionable Malasaña neighborhood and that his attackers had uttered homophone insults, used a penknife to slash his lip. and write him "maricon" (the Spanish equivalent of "queer") on one buttock.
The alleged assault sparked an uproar within the political class, with left-wing parties accusing the far-right Vox party of encouraging homophobic attacks. Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez hastened to convene a government commission on hate crimes and to express his
“strongest condemnation”
of the attack. The radical left party Podemos, a minority partner in the government coalition, estimated on social networks on Wednesday that "Vox had plunged the country into hatred of a collective which suffers from violent attacks in (the) streets".
This version change sparked a cascade of reactions on Twitter.
“Hate crimes against LGTBI increased by 43% in the first half of 2021,”
posted Equality Minister Irene Montero, calling not to focus on
“the tree that hides the forest”. "All by himself, this fool has just brought water to the mill of all the ultra speeches and all the aggressors",
tweeted the filmmaker and activist Javier Giner, claiming his
"helplessness"
and his
"rage ".
The incident occurred just two months after the murder in a beating of a young gay man in the north of the country, an attack suspected of being homophobic and which had scandalized and led to numerous protests in the country.