U.S. Warns of Sexual Assault Risk in Spain

MADRID — The United States Embassy in Madrid has warned that Americans visiting Spain are at a heightened risk because of “a rise in sexual assault” in the country in recent years — a rare such countrywide alert for a European nation.

A security alert from the embassy this week comes at a time when the Spanish authorities are investigating a rape accusation filed by three American sisters against three Afghan men over events on New Year’s Eve in southeastern Spain. It also warned of the challenges that those who experience sexual assault face when seeking justice in the Spanish legal system.

The United States had previously issued travel warnings for Spain and other European countries over the risk of terrorism, particularly after a van attack on Barcelona’s most famous promenade killed 16 people in 2017. That warning was updated last October after a secessionist conflict in the Catalonia region spiraled into several nights of violence in Barcelona and other northeastern cities.

The embassy also issued a specific warning in September against a Seville-based tour operator who was accused of assaulting American students.

In this instance, the embassy said it was responding to an increase in sex attacks “against young U.S. citizen visitors and students throughout Spain.” It cited data from Spain’s interior ministry but provided no details.

In response to the embassy’s alert, a spokesman for the Spanish interior ministry said on Wednesday that Spain had one of the lowest sex crime rates in Europe and that the country was actively fighting such crime.

Spain is a highly popular destination for tourists around the globe, with a record 83.7 million visitors last year, according to data released on Monday by its national statistics office. That included over three million Americans, a 13 percent increase from the previous year.

Yet Spain has faced stinging criticism over its handling of several high-profile sexual assault cases in recent years, with women’s rights activists charging that the country’s judiciary is dominated by men who judge cases based on faulty ideas about issues like what constitutes consent. Several verdicts have prompted street protests, including some of the world’s largest marches on International Women’s Day.

The most contentious case came to the fore in 2018, when a court sentenced five men to prison for the “continuous sexual abuse” of an 18-year-old woman during the Pamplona bull-running festival, but cleared them of the more serious charge of rape, which under Spanish law must involve violence or intimidation.

That verdict against the five men — who had filmed the assault using a cellphone and who dubbed themselves the “wolf pack” — was overruled in June by Spain’s Supreme Court, which found them guilty of rape and increased their prison sentences.

Yet in October, a case involving the sexual assault of an unconscious 14-year-old girl also resulted in the conviction of five men on a charge of sexual abuse rather than rape, when that Spanish court ruled that they had not used violence.

That type of distinction is part of what led the American Embassy to issue its caution this week, warning that “U.S. citizen victims of sexual assault in Spain can find it very difficult to navigate the local criminal justice system, which differs significantly from the U.S. system.”

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