Elías Levy Benarroch.
A Valencia judge ordered the dismissal of a case against one of last year's fallas regarding a sculpture dedicated to the war in Gaza in which its artists denounced an alleged "genocide."
Judge Matilde Sabater Alamar, presiding judge of the 12th Court of Instruction, dismissed the complaint filed by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) and the Movement Against Intolerance (MCI) against the Arrancapins falla and its artist. They alleged that the sculpture was an affront and constituted a hate crime against Jews because it depicted symbols of Judaism with a Nazi swastika and a Star of David at the top.
However, for the judge, "the facts do not exceed the limits of the exercise of freedom of expression and artistic creation protected by the Constitution and fall within the scope of harsh criticism of the attitude of a state of war," so she considered that "the necessary criteria for considering hate speech to exist" are not met.
The case had reached the investigation phase based on an initial complaint that the ninot, as the sculptures of the Valencian fallas are called, represented a Christmas tree with the top star replaced by the Star of David, and with a base in the shape of the Nazi swastika and branches from which hung the skulls of babies riddled with bullets and shrapnel.
The judge argued that the ninot was part of the Fallas festival, "totally satirical monuments aimed at social criticism," and appealed to rulings from 2011 and 2016 by higher courts in Spain that protect freedom of expression in this case.
After learning of the sentence, the Arrancapins court announced that it had been "falsely accused of a hate crime against the Jewish people," in what it described as a propaganda stunt over which "freedom of expression" had prevailed.
For its part, in a social media post, the FCJE's Platform Against Antisemitism simply commented that "Freedom of expression and humor can do a lot of harm if left unchecked."