A young woman has complained that she was harassed by a ticket inspector and a security guard while travelling on a Barcelona suburban train because she spoke to them in Catalan.
"When you speak to me, speak Spanish"
"When you speak to me, speak Spanish, because we are in Spain," said the inspector on the Renfe rail service. The incident took place last Friday, August 21st, between the Catalan towns of La Garriga and Vic at the end of Barcelona's R3 suburban line. "Every day I take the train from Vic to La Garriga and back," the woman explained, exclusively to El Nacional's Elcaso.com.
Knowing how frequently there are delays and problems on this line, the traveller explained that every time she arrives late in Vic she demands a refunded fare to compensate, as users are entitled to. She uses that refunded ticket the next day to go to La Garriga. "The inspector asked me why I always validated the tickets in Vic, insinuating that I didn't pay for those trips. I explained the issue of the refunded tickets to him and that's when he said this about 'speak Spanish to me because we're in Spain'".
"I won't speak to you in Spanish," was the woman's response, noting that both the inspector and one of the members of the pair of security guards wore National Police Corps bracelets. "I just turned around and went on with what I was doing."
"You'll take home a prize"
The incident began, said the woman, when the rail employees were taking action with another passenger which she questioned: "There was an African guy opposite me who had paid for his ticket but they had fined him." The man spoke poor Spanish, according to the woman, and "was saying that he did not understand why they were fining him". She says they made fun of him. "They told him he would 'take home a prize.'"
The woman decided to take action against what she saw as an abuse of authority and addressed the Renfe employees. "I rebuked them for acting this way, and even worse on a line that functions as badly as the R3 does." It was then that they again began to order her "to speak to them in Spanish because we were in Spain".
Didn't want to let her off the train
In one of the videos to which Elcaso.com has had exclusive access, it can be seen that one of the security guards physically imposes himself within centimetres of the woman and tells her that he has no obligation to speak Catalan. Even more serious, in times of pandemic by coronavirus, the security guard does not maintain any kind of safety distance.
"When we got to Vic they didn't want to let me off the train." She says they threatened to call the police. "I told them to do whatever they wanted. In the end I was able to get off and I left."
Renfe is investigating
Asked about the case by ElCaso.com, Renfe reports that they are studying the audio transcript of the recording in order to clarify what was said between the woman and the security guards. They are also investigating what happened in the moments before the start of the video recording.
Barcelona's Rodalies, the suburban train services run by Spain's Renfe rail operator have long been a source of frustration and complaints by users due to their poor service and lack of state investment.