The Court of First Instance number 39 of Barcelona has rejected to precautionary the publication of the book Hate (Anagrama), by writer Luisgé Martín, according to the car to which the country has had access. The work has the testimony of José Breton, the murderer sentenced to 40 years in jail for killing his children, Ruth and José, six and two years old. He also speaks of the life of Ruth Ortiz, the mother of the children, who had requested the paralysis of the publication for illegitimate interference of the right to honor, intimacy and the image of the deceased minors.
The judge considers in his letter, of four pages, that “the documents provided (in the mother’s demand) to which reference has been made are insufficient to be able to assess” (the case). Therefore, the magistrate does not pronounce on whether the content of the book violates the law, but is limited to rejecting the petition, claiming the fundamental right to freedom of expression, not having elements to evaluate it. His decision is appealed in appeal before the Provincial Court of Barcelona.
The magistrate also points out that “there are many doubts about the territorial competence” of his court. The lawsuit was filed by Ortiz before the Provincial Court of Córdoba, and the Minors Prosecutor’s Office of that city transferred the case to Barcelona, where the headquarters of the Anagram editorial is. The complaint collected some passages from the book reproduced in information that came out in different media – among them the first article with an extract of the book, published in The confidential-. “If we presume that the civil guardianship that is intended to obtain in the subsequent main trial requested precautionary measure would be aimed at avoiding an illegitimate interference in the honor, intimacy and the image caused in the book (…) The documents provided are not suitable for it.” The head of the Barcelona Court adds that the lawsuit is based on “journalistic articles where the book is referred, but none shows the content of the same (except for the six lines of the press release). It is absolutely impossible to be able to make a provisional and indicative judgment favorable to the estimation of the guardianship that would be collected in the main trial”.
The Minors Prosecutor’s Office requested on Thursday to temporarily suspend the publication of the book after the complaint filed by the mother. The Public Ministry had claimed as a precautionary measure “provisionally suspend the publication and distribution” of the book until “examining its content and issuing an opinion.” “This is a request unheard of part Since the requested measure is interested in the suspension of the publication of a book scheduled for next March 26, 2025 ″, the court responds. The magistrate also argues that what they contributed are newspaper articles where reference is made to the book, “but none shows the content of the book.”
The court adds in its car that “it is not possible to clarify” the gender to which the book belongs (in reference to whether it is fiction or non -fiction), “this being a matter of special transcendence when weighing the limits of freedom of expression.” For all these reasons, he considers that it is not possible to assess the “proportionality” of the measure claimed by the Prosecutor’s Office. “We are faced with a provisional suspension request from the publication of a book (…) It cannot be forgotten that we would be restricting the fundamental right to freedom of expression,” adds the car. The Prosecutor’s Office can appeal the judicial decision within 20 days. In the letter, the judge recognizes that it is a special case: “It cannot be alien to the circumstances surrounding this incident or the special protection that victims deserve, but civil procedural legislation does not contain mechanisms that allow access to the request made by the Public Ministry in accordance with the exposed reasoning.”
Ortiz’s lawyer also claimed Burofax to the Anagrama publishing house that stopped the publication of the volume, whose departure was initially scheduled on Wednesday, March 26. The publishing house published on Friday a statement in which it expressed “that both the author and the publisher are in their right to publish this work”, although he added that they will wait “to what the judicial resolutions indicate.”
An Anagram spokesman has pointed to El País on Monday that he has not yet made a decision on whether he will distribute the book next Wednesday, March 26. Ruth Ortiz’s lawyer is studying the judicial order to decide the next step.
In Hate, Martín tries to investigate the criminal’s mind, in his motivations and his feelings, while making a reconstruction of the crime and his own personal approach to Breton. The author crossed with him many phone calls and some sixty cards, in addition to visiting him in prison. After Ruth Ortiz’s complaint, the author of the book explained in a statement: “I started writing Hate Because he was unable to understand that someone could kill their own children. Vicaria violence is probably the most incomprehensible of all. “And it defends:”Hate It does not give a voice to José Bretón: he removes it, denies his explanation of the facts, confronts him with his contradictions. The book, in my humble opinion, serves to show the labyrinths of the infamy and the vileness of a murderer. ”
Born and raised in Madrid, Martín’s work has always focused on the subjective exploration of conflict personalities. LGTBIQ+collective activist, won the Herralde Award in 2020 for its novel One hundred nightsand he is also the author of works such as The shade woman o The memoir The love upside down, a stark confession on the tortuous path that he toured until he accepted his homosexuality.