The Madrid criminal court has decided to acquit the ultra Miguel Frontera of the multiple accusations of having harassed Pablo Iglesias, Irene Montero and their children for months throughout 2020 at his home in Galapagar. The ruling, to which elDiario.es has had access, explains that there is insufficient evidence that Frontera’s intention was to “monitor” the two politicians, “seek their physical proximity” or directly establish contact with them. Other accusations, such as those of insults due to the insults he uttered, would have expired according to the sentence even if it has been proven that he committed a crime.
Frontera was tried last May on charges of having led the massive protest demonstrations that dozens of people staged in front of the home of the former minister and the former vice president of the Government during the pandemic. Both Iglesias and Montero told the magistrate what she had meant for them and their family while Frontera, a protagonist last November in the demonstrations on Ferraz Street, presented herself as a victim of harassment by the complainants.
In its ruling, the court accepted the arguments of Frontera’s defence, led by Polonia Castellanos, president of Abogados Cristianos. It recognised that there was “constant noise from a megaphone that is highly annoying” and that “it disrupts the family and personal life of any person” – the Montero-Iglesias couple has two young children – but added that the noise around their house occurred “before and after the accused went to the rallies”. According to the judge, there were “supporters” of Pablo Iglesias at the place who were also making noise.
The resolution also justifies that, at that time, numerous demonstrations against the Government took place as a protest against the management of the coronavirus crisis. “These were annoying, repeated and noisy but political rallies,” settles the ruling, which is still appealable. That, says the magistrate going to the RAE, was a mess. “We must take into account the temporal and political context in which they occurred,” she says. And the fear that Iglesias and Montero said they had was not because of what Frontera actually did but because of what the police and bodyguards were telling them.
Nor is he convicted for recording Iglesias inside his house perched on a rock near the garden fence. “The images have nothing relevant, nor did he place a camera that recorded continuously, it is a single recording lasting 10 seconds,” he justifies. Nor did he incur coercion: “From the family point of view, it is only proven that he saw the complainants one day, separated by a fence, and the house had security 24 hours a day,” he explains. And he concludes by assuring that the far-rightists who demonstrated for months, daily, at the couple’s house, the only thing they were looking for was to “show their discomfort, disagreement, and their criticism of the political management that was carried out during the pandemic.”
From Galapagar to Ferraz
Miguel Frontera began to gain followers on the internet when, during the pandemic, he promoted and led the almost daily rallies of dozens of people in front of the home of Irene Montero and Pablo Iglesias in the Madrid town of Galapagar. Last November, in addition, he became one of the visible faces of the demonstrations in front of the PSOE headquarters on Ferraz Street in the capital with a Captain America shield with the flag of Spain, until he was accused of some of the protesters of being a police infiltrator.
At the rallies that took place for months outside the house of Iglesias and Montero, where they lived with three small children, Frontera took on a leading role: carrying loudspeakers to play music, broadcasting the caceroladas live and looking for new access areas to get as close as possible to the house despite the security measures. So much so that a court imposed a restraining order on him.
During the trial, Frontera presented himself as a victim and not as an accused of harassment. “The one who received real harassment, dramatic harassment, was me,” he said before justifying the harassment and blaming those affected: “The ideologue was Pablo Iglesias, the one who asked for a cacerolada against the king was Pablo Iglesias,” he explained. . Her lawyer, the president of Christian Lawyers, even asked Iglesias and Montero if their children only woke up and got upset when the Spanish anthem was played over the public address system.
The trial itself was the stage chosen by some extremists to prolong the harassment against the former minister and Podemos candidate for the European elections and the former vice president of the Government. Francisco Zugasti, known for going to court with “STOP feminazis” banners and convicted of accosting a civil guard in front of his home in Galapagar, told Iglesias inside the courts: “Face the consequences.”
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