Marta Torrecillas, the woman whose fingers were dislocated by Civil Guard officers last year in the 1st October referendum at Barcelona's Pau Claris Secondary School, has been interviewed in the Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung. In an article published this Sunday, the newspaper describes the death threats that Torrecillas began receiving soon after she first shared her story.
The news of Marta's injuries went viral on the day of the referendum itself after she made a voice recording saying that police had broken her fingers, one by one. A day later, Torrecillas gave an interview in which she explained that her fingers had not been broken, but they had been dislocated. At that point, as Aargauer Zeitung reports, "yellow" Spanish media began giving details her private life, which led to her receiving thousands of threats.
"The anger of many Spaniards against the Catalans caused Torrecillas' phone number to be published in an internet forum. She received more than 3,000 messages and 900 calls and, even though she changed her number, she continues to receive threats of murder and rape", explains the newspaper. "She had to leave her job as an events organizer because her face was hated by people all over the Spanish state and now she works for an employer who sees the independence movement positively", adds the article.
The Swiss daily describes how a policeman grasped Torrecillas' breasts and how he dislocated the fingers of her left hand one by one, and adds that, although the Spanish police deny this, the scene can be seen in a TV3 documentary. "It hurt like hell. The pain went away long ago; the death threats didn't", says Marta.