The National Police have arrested five of the six alleged perpetrators of the assault on Rubén Rosón and Jorge Fernández, two members of the Asamblea Moza d’Asturies collective, which took place on September 11 during the San Mateo festivities in Oviedo. The detainees will be brought before the court this Thursday, accused of “assault with injuries and hate,” according to a spokesperson for the National Police who confirmed this to this newspaper, also stating that a sixth suspect remains unidentified.
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The assault occurred when a group of eight far-right individuals vandalized the militants’ booth and uttered racist and xenophobic insults, and as they left, according to the popular festivals collective in a social media statement, they shouted: “arriba España” and “rojos de mierda.” Six days after the incident, the officers have already identified the suspects, who were seen in a video attacking the activists with uncovered faces in the Cathedral square, as these two were finishing their shift at the association’s booth to which they belong.
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Reactions to this event were swift. Associations such as Fiestes Populares expressed their “rejection of fascist violence,” just as the Oviedo City Council’s Festivities councilor, Covadonga Díaz, condemned the attack and defended “aggression-free” festivities, among others. But the statements of Oviedo’s mayor, Alfredo Canteli, also caused strong controversy after he said he did not believe the perpetrators were “such bad people” because “Oviedo has a phenomenal youth.” The identification of the alleged aggressors came the same day Canteli retracted his controversial statements and firmly rejected “any form of violence, physical or verbal, unequivocally and without any nuance, wherever it comes from and whoever exercises it.”
