Judge Valle, professor of humor

The filming of court statements is revealing the precise tone and color that some magistrates print in their courtrooms. We saw how Adolfo Carretero interrogated the alleged victim of sexual assault by Errejón with a great display of sexist clichés and an aggressive attitude and now images of a colleague of his, Judge Carlos Valle, are emerging, which are also problematic. The comedian and radio host Héctor de Miguel, alias Quequé, is being prosecuted for a joke about the Valley of the Fallen, which suggested demolishing it with dynamite and using the resulting stones to throw at pedophile priests (as a response to the harassment that some women suffer when they go to have an abortion). Valle then asked the presenter ofTime twenty something What would you think if a programme joked about blowing up the square of LGBTIQ+ activist Pedro Zerolo? And he concludes: "And we throw [the little stones] at all the homosexuals who have abused children. That is, at all homosexuals." Drum sound from a pathetic joke: ba-dum-pssst!

The rancid right has long been using the same weapon against humour: decontextualisation. Saying something from a comedy radio show is not the same as saying something from a courtroom where you can decide someone's future. And targeting a symbol of oppression is not the same as targeting an activist in favour of vulnerable minorities. But, even taking into account the enormous differences, the right to offend should be preserved when it does not threaten people's integrity: words, words, wordsAnd that is what seems to escape the learned judge Valle: his words can indeed be hate speech. Which – he knows this better than I – would be a typified crime. Will anyone in the judiciary dare to put this bell on the cat? Exactly, I like humor too.