'Arny, story of an infamy': accusations against celebrities, child abuse and a collective atonement in three chapters

The question is as uncomfortable today as it was 25 years ago.

How do you make amends for the innocent, especially if they are famous people, who are publicly displayed in sordid court cases that become spectacle?

Because the pain remains.

Jesús Vázquez shows it starkly in the documentary series

(which premieres this Friday on HBO Max), where the actor and presenter of fashion in the nineties remembers how in a few months of homophobic fury he was dragged through the mud together with Jorge Cadaval (of the duo Los Morancos) and Javier Gurruchaga (of The Mondragón orchestra).

Without having anything to do with that case of exploitation of minors in a downtown bar that shook a conservative Seville hungover from Expo 92. The case morbidly entertained Spain, with a parallel trial on television, which saw a vein in the three-ring circus of celebrities, sex and lies that led to what began as a very local affair.

The docuseries is a collective atonement in three chapters and an invitation to think if we have learned anything.

Everyone was marked by that case of prostitution of minors that shook a Spain where "faggot" was openly shouted at gays: the acquitted (32, including all celebrities), the convicted (16, including an aristocrat), the victims (it was proved that there was prostitution of minors in that pub), the press (which showed the blemishes of the most yellow journalism), the justice system (which was as blind as carca)... All muddy with noise and shame.

Jesús Vázquez is the backbone of the three-chapter documentary directed by Juan Moya, which focuses on the failures of the system, the parallel trial and infamy;

in the persecution of the gay that was effectively unleashed with this case and that, in the end, devastated what at that time was the seed of the first Chueca in the 1990s (the Madrid neighborhood) in the Sevillian style.

Vázquez is the only one of the celebrities involved who shows his face in the production, which covers the botched investigation of this matter, which ran amok in 1996, when it was learned that there were famous people involved in a case of corruption of minors, which until then it had passed without pain or glory on even pages, in tail summaries.

"A judge was not judging me, the whole society was judging me," sums up Jesús Vázquez between tears, which they will never be able to erase after the ordeal he suffered with his mother, to whom, before there was a trial, he even lied that he had been acquitted so that he might die in peace.

The case of the Arny's pub in Seville went from being a purely local affair to a national scandal in January 1996, when it was learned that some twenty people linked to the world of entertainment, politics, the media and the administration of justice were being investigated. by the Group of Minors (Grume) of the Seville Police.

The then holder of the Investigating Court number 13 of Seville, María Auxiliadora Echávarri, is the worst stop in the series (in which she declined to participate).

It was the time of the witch hunt: every morning a pool was published, in which the only condition to be included was to be a known homosexual and seen on the streets of Seville.

He was the joke of the bars, including the ambient ones in the city.

The curiosity was unleashed and jumped to television programs, where

and

, especially, used the matter to raise audiences.

Greed arrived: a lawyer prepared a document where he offered 35 witnesses or defendants to the television stations en bloc (for 40 million pesetas then, 240,000 euros now, without applying almost 30 years of inflation) or for up to 600,000 pesetas per individual , a business that EL PAÍS denounced.

The Arny club, in an image that appears in the documentary.

The parallel trial, even before the oral hearing began, was tragic for people like Jesús Vázquez or the juvenile judge Manuel Rico Lara (acquitted and now deceased), a humanist who was the victim of a clear revenge of combined forces.

But it also served to see how the case had been built on an original lie, that of "witness number 1", José Antonio Sánchez Barriga, who after accusing left and right, one fine day said (first on TV and at a low price, of course) that it was all a lie, that it was “a little job” that the police commissioned him.

He is still in prison today: he has committed three murders (one being a minor, even before Arny: he told it one day as an anecdote).

He did not care: they all went to the bench.

The documentary by Cuarzo Producciones offers an examination of conscience about the "media circus" that broke out around the Arny trial, but leaves aside the actual convictions for prostituting and corrupting minors that actually occurred, to focus on the failures of the system, in the infamy of the persecution, in the damage that the persecuted suffered unfairly and falsely (for two years!) and even to gather some more than improbable theories about the origin of the case (such as that it was unleashed to cover up the GAL case, impossible to hide).

Jesús Vázquez (left) and Jorge Cadaval (right), at the entrance of the Seville Court during the trial of the 'Arny case' in 1998. Emilio morenatti / EFE

To do this, he uses a medium tone, full of testimonies, in which he reflects on what happened, how that matter got out of the hands of the police, the justice system, the press, the lawyers, until what was a The case of corruption of minors became an example of the homophobia installed in Spanish society, as this description of one of the defendants made by one of the Grume bosses clearly demonstrates: "He is a fagot, depraved and very intelligent to dirty business."

The focus of the documentary is to show how "a horrible criminal act" was turned "into a homophobic weapon", in a "demonization of homosexuality".

Everything in a Spain where the gay was called a fagot (on the street, openly: it was

insult that the

used), the bars that were later called "environmental" were "sissy slums" (literal phrase that he told me a case investigator)...

Now that lynching, cancellation, and fake news are commonplace on social media;

In which activist media bring the ember to their sardine with contempt for truth and balance, with parallel trials out of habit, we must ask ourselves again: have we learned anything?

The answer is on the telly.

Jorge A. Rodríguez

covered the

as a journalist from the night of the raid and search at the premises until it was resolved in the Supreme Court and participates in the docuseries.

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