He was fined for the offence of “disobedience to the authorities”

Vilaweb and CNM

Xavier Casanovas, a teacher at Barcelona’s Polytechnical University of Catalonia, has been fined 601 euros for having spoken in Catalan to the Spanish police at the passport control of Barcelona’s El Prat airport. Agents justify the fine for Casanovas saying that he hindered their work by addressing them in Catalan. The incident occurred on September 4th 2016.

Interviewed by VilaWeb, Casanovas explained that he greeted the police officer when he gave him his passport. He did so in Catalan, and that was what triggered off the incident. The policeman ordered him to speak in Spanish. “I’ve never had any trouble speaking Spanish, I am a person who when addressed in Spanish, answers in Spanish” said Casanovas. He added: “He got so arrogant that I decided to continue speaking Catalan”.

The policeman warned him that if he did not speak Spanish to him, he could lose his flight. He said that addressing him in Catalan showed “lack of respect” and was a sample of “little esteem for the country”. Casanovas passed the passport control and thought the whole thing was over. But it wasn’t. The agent went to look for him in the boarding queue along with another policeman. According to his story, they took him to an information point and again requested to see his passport to note down his personal details. The officers told him that he was obliged to speak to them in Spanish and warned that if he continued using Catalan, they would have to call a translator and he might lose his flight. When Casanovas asked the the policemen to identify themselves, one said he had no identification because “it did not fit in his shirt”. According to Casanovas, they left with an aggressive tone and one said to him: “I know where you live”.

When he returned from the trip, Casanovas decided to submit a complaint to the Mossos d’Esquadra due to the degrading treatment he had received from the agents. However, the judge shelved the case because he said he could not identify the officers involved. Six months after the event, on March 13th, he received notification about the initiation of disciplinary proceedings “in relation to regulations of public security”, the so-called ‘gag law’. According to the text, he had committed an offense of a serious nature because “he ignored the orders given by agents on active service, and thus hindered their work and delayed the normal flow of passengers”.

Casanovas receives legal advice from the language defence organization Plataforma per la Llengua and from Fundació Catalunya to make his allegations. They consider it a “serious case of discrimination by the Spanish administration”. In addition, Casanovas will also ask the court that investigated his complaint to reopen the case now that, thanks to the police report, they can discover the identity of the two agents involved.