Outrage over police assault on a minor in the lead-up to Barça: "These animals must pay for the abuse"

BarcelonaThe police charges and the forceful removals of Esteladas that occurred during the prelude to this Sunday's match between Barça and Elche have been personified in a video on X in which a young Barça fan is seen falling to the ground from baton blows just after the National Police removed his Estelada. Consequently, the wave of political and social reactions has not been long in coming: it has received the unanimous condemnation of the independence movement, from Junts to ERC, the CUP, Òmnium Cultural, Aliança Catalana and various entities and fan clubs, who demand that the Ministry of the Interior explain the agents' actions and hold them accountable.

The young Catalan fan, a minor, received several baton blows until he decided to defend himself, which led to numerous officers hitting him forcefully until they subdued him on the ground. He spent the night in the cells and is now free.

Junts was the first to react. The party's leader in Congress, Miriam Nogueras, has requested from X "all available information" on the events and has demanded that the officers – whom she categorized as "animals" – "pay" for their actions, which she describes as "abuse and mistreatment". The party president, Carles Puigdemont, has gone further and accused the force of "supurating hatred towards Catalan identity structurally", a "disease" in which, he says, "people from the highest instances to football players, including judges and journalists, participate". In a healthy society, he adds, this "would be intolerable", but "in Spain it is a merit". The party is registering an extensive battery of questions in Congress this Monday on the legal basis for the removal of estelades and is requesting disciplinary measures if a disproportionate use of force is confirmed.

ERC has followed the same line, with an official statement in which it calls for "an immediate investigation" into the police operation and has submitted a request for the Minister of the Interior to appear before Congress. ERC demands that it be clarified whether the police adhered "to the principles of proportionality and respect for fundamental rights" and recalls that "freedom of expression must always be guaranteed, regardless of where Barça plays or the sporting context".

Òmnium Cultural, for its part, has placed the episode in a broader context: "That the police confiscate esteladas and exercise disproportionate violence is not new: it evidences the serious democratic shortcomings of the Spanish state," the entity tweeted, insisting that defending independence "is exercising freedom of expression" and "is not a crime." Acció Cassandra, an independentist collective dedicated to documenting and reporting cases of repression, has also joined the networks, announcing that it is preparing formal complaints about the police action in Elx, as well as requesting direct testimonies of the events to gather evidence. Several Barça fan clubs have sent similar complaints on social media and have demanded accountability for the officers present at the stadium. The club itself has issued a statement denouncing the events.

Aliança Catalana has taken advantage of the case to conduct political campaigning, linking the Elx case with the arrival of immigrants: "A state that washes us in Elx for bringing Catalan flags while in Ceuta it makes way for rapists and thieves. Will you really not vote for Aliança Catalana?", Sílvia Orriols asked on X.

A pattern that goes way back

The Elche episode is not an isolated incident, but the latest chapter in a trend that has been repeating for over a decade. From the 2012 Copa del Rey final at the Vicente Calderón – when ERC already denounced a "brutal police aggression" for an estelada – to the controls at the Bernabéu in 2015, the express prohibition of esteladas at the 2017 Copa del Rey final, or the most recent seizures at the Metropolitano stadium in Madrid this April, the Catalan symbol has been systematically subjected to checks and removals in sports contexts. It is not only the Spanish police who have pursued the symbol: UEFA itself fined Barça 40,000 euros for displaying esteladas and independence chants, considering it a political act and not a social outcry, as the club alleged.

On a legal level, the removal of esteladas is usually based on Law 19/2007 against violence, racism, xenophobia and intolerance in sport, which in reality does not mention political symbols: it prohibits flags that incite violence or offend someone due to race, religion or sexual orientation, not ideological expression. In fact, a Madrid court already overturned it in 2016, following a lawsuit by the association Drets and a Barça member, considering that the estelada was "a simple manifestation of ideological freedom" protected by the Constitution – a sentence with limited effects to that match but which Abad recalled this Monday on X to question the legality of what happened in Elche.