Racist football fans given 8 months prison for insults

The head of the Investigative Court of Valencia has sentenced each of the three Valencia CF fans who directed racist insults at the Real Madrid CF player Vinicius Júnior on May 21, 2023, to 8 months in prison.

The sentence, which has been notified to the parties after an agreed quick trial, declares the accused perpetrators of a crime against moral integrity with aggravating circumstances of discrimination for racist reasons.

In addition to sentencing them to imprisonment and payment of procedural costs, the ruling prohibits them from accessing football stadiums that host League and/or Spanish Football Federation matches for two years.

During the hearing, the defendants themselves pleaded guilty and agreed with the sentences requested by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the private accusations brought by Real Madrid, the Professional Football League and the Royal Spanish Football Federation.

Since May of last year, the court had been carrying out preliminary proceedings regarding these events, which it transformed by means of an order dated May 15 into a procedure of urgent proceedings.

The judicial resolution, which is firm, establishes as proven that the three defendants rebuked Vinicius with shouts, gestures and chants referring to the “colour of his skin, acting with obvious contempt for the black colour of the player’s skin.”

These “racist” shouts and gestures, consisting among other things of repeating sounds and imitating the movements of monkeys, caused the footballer “feelings of frustration, shame and humiliation, with the consequent impairment of their intrinsic dignity,” the sentence details.

These actions took place with the football stadium full and before a “massive television, radio and media audience”, which is why they generated in parallel “a great controversy” that same day and the following “with a great impact on social networks.”

The authors of these chants – as stated in the section of proven facts of the sentence – showed from the first moment they were located their “repentance and their intention to apologise to the player “, something they have reiterated today in a writing in their appearance, so the ruling applies the mitigating circumstance of repentance.