4F case

The convicted Rodrigo Lanza in 2012

On the night of Saturday, 4 February (4F) 2006, a rave was happening at the Anarkopenya squat at 55 Calle Sant Pere Mès Baix in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona.[1][2] It had been occupied since 2002.[1] When the Guàrdia Urbana (municipal police) patrolled the area, objects including flowerpots were thrown from the roof. One policeman was hit on the head and fell unconscious.[3]

The police began to arrest people on the street including three men of Latin American ancestry with European passports, namely Alex Cisternas, Rodrigo Lanza and Juan Pintos.[4][3] In total there were nine arrests.[5] According to the later testimony of Lanza and Pintos, the three men were beaten and tortured at the police station. Their injuries were so bad that they were taken to Hospital del Mar.[4] At the hospital, the police encountered Patricia Heras and Alfredo Pestenas, who were there after a bicycle crash elsewhere in the city. They checked their phones and decided to arrest them also.[4]

Joan Clos, former mayor, pictured as director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme in 2011

All of those arrested had European passports, yet only the three men of Latin American ancestry were remanded into pre-trial detention.[6] At trial in 2008, seven people were convicted of their charges. They were sentenced to between three and five years in prison.[4] Mayor Joan Clos had said on 5 February 2006 that the policeman had been injured by a flowerpot thrown from the roof of the squat. If he had given evidence to that effect, the prosecution case would have fallen apart, but he changed his story to say that the policeman was hit by a stone.[7] A forensic report which confirmed that the policeman had been hit by an object from above was submitted to trial but ignored by the judge.[3]

The group of three men had already served two years and therefore could be released, but on appeal to the Supreme Court of Spain their sentences were increased so they went back to jail.[4] Cisternas was sent to Cárcel Modelo in Madrid.[7] Despite the two having been charged and convicted together, Alfredo Pestenas was pardoned and Patricia Heras received a three year sentence.[7] Whilst on release in April 2011, she killed herself by jumping off a balcony.[7]

Activists paste up the new name of Cinema Patricia Heras on a squatted cinema in 2013

Soon after Patricia Heras had committed suicide in 2011, Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega met at the beginnings of the 15M movement at Plaça de Catalunya and decided to make a short film commemorating her life. This project then became the film Ciutat morta.[4] It challenged the official narrative about the events of 4 February and suggested the people convicted were not guilty of offences, but rather guilty of being "incívicos", namely people who were considered "uncivil" since they were assumed to be skateboarders, street drinkers, sex workers and squatters.[4][8] The film accuses the police, the justice system and the doctors of permitting torture.[9] It premiered at a squatted cinema and when it was eventually shown on Catalan television received over 500,000 views.[8]

Two of the police officers alleged to have beaten up the three men were Bakari Samyang and Victor Bayona.[4] In October 2014, they were themselves convicted and imprisoned for beating up and torturing a man in 2006. The two off-duty police officers had been challenged by the student from Trinidad and Tobago for harassing a woman in a bar. He was the son of a diplomat and complained about how the officers had taken him to a police station and tortured him, resulting in their convictions.[7] The two men were imprisoned for two years and three months.[10]

Rodrigo Lanza was imprisoned for five years after a 2017 barfight in Zaragoza with a man who had been a member of the far-right party Falange Española de las JONS since the 1980s. The man was struck and fell over, later dying of his injuries. In 2020, Lanza's sentence was increased to 20 years.[11]

The 4F case generated a controversial debate, which broadened from the voicing of concerns regarding the innocence of those convicted into a discussion about the moral state of the city of Barcelona.[2] As part of the gentrification of Barcelona, mayor Joan Clos had introduced the Plan for the Promotion of Civic Virtues which penalised behaviours such as begging, skateboarding, public urination and prostitution. Framing these actions as a matter of public hygiene, almost 150 fines were issued every day.[8] The 4F case challenged this discourse and the investigation by journalists from La Directa which accompanied the film Ciutat Morta noted that it was curious a building which was owned by the city council of Barcelona in a residential area and occupied purely for raves without a connection to the political squatting movement had been tolerated for several years, suggesting it had been deliberately left alone in order to make the neighbours move away.[1][12]

On the issue of police violence, a professor of social anthropology asserted there had been no change in police tactics since the end of the Franco dictatorship and Amnesty International released a report in 2007 which condemned both the impunity of police officers from prosecution and the bias of judges.[7] Under a new administration led by Ada Colau, the city council of Barcelona pledged to make a new behavioural code for the Guàrdia Urbana which would encompass video surveillance in all custody areas and the right for arrestees to see a doctor unaccompanied by an officer.[13] An investigation into police wrongdoing was stymied by the disappearance of all documents related to the case and as of 2017, no convictions had been overturned.[13][14]

The policeman struck on the head became tetraplegic and has never spoken publicly about the events. He was awarded the Police Merit Cross in 2013.[15] The book Ciutat morta: Cronica del caso del 4F (Dead city: Chronicle of the 4F case) was released exactly ten years after the original incident.[2] The 4F case returned to the attention of local media in 2020, when the city council refused to withdraw its prize of the City Award of Barcelona (Premi Ciutat de Barcelona) for the directors of the film, following the increase in the sentence for Rodrigo Lanza's 2017.[16]

• Group Against Criminalization (2018). "Some recent mainstream media representations of squatting in Barcelona". In Squatting Everywhere Kollective (ed.). Fighting for spaces, fighting for our lives: Squatting movements today (1. Auflage ed.). Münster. pp. 325–342. ISBN 9783942885904.