The defendant in a hate crime against a gay couple has pleaded guilty in the trial held at the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, accepting a sentence of one and a half years in prison and a 1,000 euro fine. Additionally, it has been agreed to suspend his entry into prison for two years and to carry out community service for 4 months. The Public Prosecutor's Office attributed to the defendant the commission in 2023, in the Cuesta Piedra neighborhood of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, of a crime against dignity for discriminatory reasons, in conjunction with two charges against moral integrity in the form of hate. For all these reasons, it requested one year and nine months in prison and the payment of various sums totaling nearly 4,300 euros, given the injuries and insults they suffered. The Prosecutor's Office's statement recounts that initially the defendant began to publicly harass them, although they paid him no mind and continued on their way, at which point he threw a can of beer at them while continuing to insult them to the point that the victims had to take refuge in a building's entrance. At this point, the defendant continued to threaten to cut their throats, to drive them out of his neighborhood, and then to pull out an iron bar with the intention of assaulting them until the police arrived and arrested him. As a consequence, one of the victims suffered superficial wounds on the back of his arms, bruises on his right thigh, and a muscular contracture that took four days to heal without leaving any lasting effects. The other victim sustained scratches and lacerations, bruises and swelling on his shoulder and hip, and tendinitis that lasted eight days until his recovery, also without any lasting effects. According to the Prosecutor's Office's statement, "the verbal expressions, the loud and contemptuous tone he used, the public exposure to which he subjected them, the apparent gratuitousness of the attack, and the physical assaults into which the verbal attack degenerated crystallized into a grave humiliation that diminished their dignity." As a precautionary measure at the time, the defendant was prohibited from approaching the complainants within 50 meters of their homes, moving away if he encountered them, and he is also forbidden from communicating with them by any means.
