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Chueca, between bewilderment and disappointment: "He made fun of us"

Chueca, between bewilderment and disappointment: "He made fun of us"

"Although this boy has lied, we must not think that there are no attacks against our group. It may happen that if it happens to me tomorrow there are people who do not believe it." For Romel, who works at the Love Chueca hairdresser, the news of the false homophobic complaint that has shaken public opinion these days has caught him on the wrong foot. And he has not been the only one.

Yesterday morning Chueca woke up clueless. Hours earlier, on Wednesday afternoon, the young man allegedly attacked in Malasaña by eight hooded men confessed to having invented such an attack, consenting to have the word "faggot" tattooed on his buttocks. "I always walk through this neighborhood and I never saw aggression of any kind. As a result of this news, I did feel afraid to go out on the street, but now...", slips a confused Romel.

In this central neighborhood it is feared that this event will lead to something similar to the fable of Pedro and the wolf. "I think he has done us a disservice... We all get very scared when we hear the news, but now it turns out that he has taken advantage of our group. In a country that is so generalized... it does not leave us in a good place" , Héctor points out while he waits leaning on the railing of the Chueca metro.

Around it and on the adjoining streets, LGBT symbols decorate some balconies. There are even flags with written messages such as "Samuel was killed for being a fagot", as a sign of protest over events that have occurred in recent months. Hence the fear that this event will tarnish real aggression.

"Everything was very strange"

"The first thing I thought was that this lie would affect our collective. The second thing was that he was a 20-year-old boy who was caught in a hoax and didn't know how to get out... Maybe he would have consumed something, telling such a story so that your boyfriend doesn't find out...", argues Juan, a clerk at SR, a store that sells everything from whips and whips to fetish toys so as not to get bored in the bedroom.

At 55 years old, he has seen many things. On more than one occasion in these central streets they have called him "faggot and similar things", although he has always passed by ("they insult themselves"). But there is a long way to go from there to an attack as "like a movie" as the one invented by the aforementioned young man: "Everything was very strange, before they said anything I already imagined it was a lie. There were no images of eight guys dressed in black and hooded men in Malasaña... on a Sunday at 5:00 pm There was no sign of the woman who had hit a glass to make them stop beating her... If that woman was brave enough to confront them, she would have testified before the police. There were no clues."

Juan takes to evoking past times of his youth, remembering when "the Guerrillas of Christ the King engraved homosexuals, with a knife, a swastika on their foreheads." "They didn't call you 'faggot' with a cutter up your ass, because to write seven letters you have to be patient...", says this clerk, for whom this case "has interested some political parties to attack each other": " They have stopped talking about the price of electricity, about the problem with the Court of Justice... Not to mention Marlaska. If the Police were doubting, he had to know that those suspicions existed... They made the kid talk many times because he was falling into a lot of contradictions. The minister should have kept quiet until he saw what would happen with the investigation".

Most of the residents and merchants consulted by this newspaper agree that they have never had any incident in Chueca. "Another thing is outside the neighborhood, on Fuencarral street for example, where sometimes they have even tried to throw garbage bags at me. I'm not afraid of them, but in that area it is very common at night to hear cries of 'faggot' from aggressively," explains Brandon, a Venezuelan who, along with her boyfriend, runs the Ixion underwear (and lots of leather) store. And he concludes: "When I found out I felt upset, he practically made fun of our collective. He has played with our credibility."


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