The trial against the alleged harassment at work of the Galician Television, denounced by the cameraman and LGTBI activist Fito Ferreiro, is ready for sentencing
On Friday 24 September, the trial for harassment at work of TV cameraman Fito Ferreiro Seoane (A Coruña, 1962), a well-known LGTBI activist in Galicia, was held in the Social Court No. 3 of Santiago de Compostela. The plaintiff denounced Televisión de Galicia, where he has worked for 36 years, for the situation of "harassment at work" that, according to him, he has suffered since 2005 because of his "union and political activity and because of his sexual orientation, since he is homosexual".
Blueprint For Free Speech attended the trial held in the Galician capital. Fito Ferreiro was represented by his lawyer José Andrés Domínguez Castiñeiras, and presented 3 witnesses, co-workers, who corroborated several points of his claim, including that the distribution of tasks assigned to workers in TVG's news services is often random, not based exclusively on professional worth or a long career in the company. One of the witnesses also stated that he felt professionally undervalued. On the other hand, the plaintiff presented two witnesses who claimed that there had been no discrimination based on sexual orientation or ideology in the company. The trial lasted more than three hours. Judge María Iría Román Vidarte is expected to rule within a month.
Fito is a cameraman who has been working at TVG, the Galician public television station, for 36 years, winning a permanent position in 1986. He argues that despite his many years of experience covering conflicts and other international issues in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor, Bosnia and Venezuela, his company does not even use him to cover regional or national elections: "I haven't been on the election team for 20 years. Every time there are elections there are 12, 14 photojournalists, there are 40 of us, and I should have done elections sometime in the last 20 years and I haven't done them.”
According to Ferreiro, this discrimination is due to his sexual orientation and his political ideology, as he became Federal coordinator of the LGTBI groups of the PSOE in 2006, and councillor of the same party in A Coruña from 2015 to 2019.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, of the Partido Popular, has governed Galicia uninterruptedly since 2009. Feijóo won his fourth consecutive absolute majority in 2020. The platform "Defende a Galega", of which Fito Ferreiro is a member, has been denouncing for more than three years the non-compliance with the media law passed in the Galician Parliament in 2011. According to this platform, "many of the principles that inspire the law are breached on a daily basis by CRTVG, especially those that speak of preserving objectivity, impartiality, truthfulness and neutrality of information". TVG workers denounce this situation every Friday in the so-called "black Fridays", which reached 175 "Fridays" on 24 September.
In addition to the support of Blueprint For Free Speech, Fito Ferreiro has received the support of numerous LGBTI and human rights NGOs such as the asociación ALAS, of which Fito is the founder, Fundación Triángulo, Fundación 26 de Diciembre, CESIDA, Fundación Pedro Zerolo, Fundación Española por los Derechos Humanos and the Union Comisiones Obreras.
Fito Ferreiro's trial comes at a time when lgtbiphobia is in the spotlight in Spain, which was the third country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, in 2005. Although it is still one of the most tolerant nations in the world for the LGTBI community, 16 years later, homophobia is in the spotlight due to a significant increase in aggressions against the LGTBI community.
According to data presented by the Ministry of the Interior, hate crimes increased by 9.3% in the first half of 2021 compared to the same period in 2019 (the year before the pandemic). A total of 610 assaults were reported, most of which were based on racism, ideology and sexual orientation.
Two cases in particular and a homophobic neo-Nazi demonstration in the centre of Madrid have shocked the country; Samuel Luiz was beaten to death in the early hours of Saturday 3 July shouting "faggot", his death had global repercussions; On 5 September another homophobic aggression in Madrid, which turned out to be false, led President Pedro Sánchez to chair a few days later the Follow-up Commission of the Action Plan to Combat Hate Crimes in order to act to curb the increase in these crimes; The Public Prosecutor's Office also opened a hate crime investigation into the neo-Nazi demonstration that took place on Saturday 18 September in Chueca, the mythical gay neighbourhood in the centre of Madrid and an emblem of sexual diversity, where homophobic shouts and chants were heard against the residents of Chueca, the LGTBI community, and also against immigrants.