The University of Barcelona (UB) has filed another complaint against the CREA research group with the Public Prosecutor's Office and has suspended two employees and another professor.

Sexual and psychological coercion, mistreatment, exploitation, and degrading and intimidating behaviors that would fit the pattern of a "high-control coercive group." These are some of the allegations made by eleven people to the commission investigating the CREA (Community of Research on Excellence for All) research group, commissioned by the University of Barcelona (UB) following of the complaint against the professor – now emeritus – Ramon Flechafor having sexual relations "in a context of clear hierarchical inequality" with "students, scholarship recipients, doctoral candidates, or subordinates." The investigation is still ongoing, but given the "seriousness of the facts," the University of Barcelona (UB) filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor's Office this Monday—the third time they have done so—and has suspended two professors and an honorary professor, in addition to the precautionary suspension of Flecha, announced months ago. Furthermore, if the Public Prosecutor's Office decides to file charges or a lawsuit, the UB will request to join the case as a private prosecutor, according to university sources at a meeting with journalists. They stated this after receiving the preliminary report of conclusions from the first phase of the investigation, prepared by the committee of experts investigating the case, which includes the testimony of eleven of the sixteen people who reported these events. The Rector of the University of Barcelona, ​​Joan Guardia, received the report last Friday. The commission will continue its investigation, take statements from the remaining complainants, and undertake any actions it deems appropriate to clarify the facts until a criminal investigation is underway. Following these conclusions, the University of Barcelona (UB) will also offer psychological support to all those affected by this case, both currently and in the past. It will also adopt measures to prevent the academic and professional merits of those accused from being considered in faculty selection processes. "The events described by the complainants are unjustifiably serious; they are intolerable and repulsive acts that violate the dignity and respect that every person deserves. The University of Barcelona is aware of this and deeply regrets the suffering and pain of the complainants," the UB stated in a press release. Judicial persecution

Ramon Flecha and his successor as director of CREA, Marta Soler, also a professor of sociology at the UB, sued the newspaper ARA in 2020 over the article"A research group at the University of Barcelona is being denounced, accused of acting like a cult."Published by this newspaper five years earlier. Following a press conference held by CREA itself, the article explained that several members of the university community had filed complaints against the research group, and that these complaints were in addition to others from 2004, which had led the university to open an internal investigation and refer it to the Public Prosecutor's Office. It also gave the account of the CREA members who spoke at the press conference.

However, and which was also publishedthe news of the dismissal of the complaintsFlecha and Soler alleged that the ARA had constructed a "completely false narrative" and that the article was a "serious and intense violation of the right to honor." In 2022, Flecha and Soler sued theNow Balearic Islands and they sued them for 30,000 euros for "moral damages".

The acronym CREA comes from the name Community of Research on Excellence for All, but twenty years ago the same acronym, then an abbreviation, referred to the name Special Research Center in Theories and Practices Overcoming Inequalities. Back then it was presented as a research center and now as a research community, but the UB (University of Barcelona) maintains that CREA has not been affiliated with the university since 2015.