Spain - Beautiful, Modern and, Yet, Still Medieval.

"when we get there, we'll want to rape everything

 we set eyes on"

It wasn't that long ago that Spaniards were slaughtering each other in hundreds of thousands. That was going on, under Franco, less than a century ago. It can take generations to climb out of that sort of barbarity.

There's an interesting gang rape trial now underway in Madrid, the heartland of the rightwing monarchist government. It involves the Pamplona "wolf pack" or "La Manada," a group of five guys from Seville who, in 2016, went to the "running of the bulls" with one thing on their minds, raping women.

They're now standing trial for the gang rape of an 18-year old woman, or at least they should be. However, in a tribute to Spanish justice, it's the woman on trial.

That line about raping everything we set eyes on? That was a text that was circulated among the gang mentioning the need to procure date rape drugs and ropes. The trial judge has excluded those messages from the evidence. What the judge did allow into evidence was a private investigator's report into the victim, her social media activities and such. That was part of the defence plan to argue that the gang sex was consensual.

"In this trial, it seems that what is being judged is not the crimes, but this woman's honour," says Amalia Fernández, president of Themis, a Spanish organisation of women jurists.

"We live in a society with patriarchal attitudes. Courts reflect society leading to a double victimisation as in this case. In crimes against women, the victim is turned into a suspect, something that never happens to complainants in other crimes."

Ms Fernández questions how the judge could have considered a private detective's report on the student from Madrid to be of any value in evaluating her level of trauma, while describing the material from the accused's WhatsApp conversations as irrelevant in terms of their "preparations" for the alleged crime.

She also criticises the fact that the accused were not cross-examined until the end of the trial after hearing all the other evidence and the testimony of the alleged victim, an extremely rare exception to the norm in Spanish trials in which defendants are put on the stand first.

...

According to the police report on the case, the men surrounded the teenager in a small alcove, removed her clothes and had unprotected penetrative sex.

The men sent WhatsApp messages to friends celebrating the sex act, and promised to share videos they took on their phones. Those videos have been examined by the court frame by frame.

The police report on the videos says that the alleged victim maintains a "passive or neutral" attitude throughout the scene, keeping her eyes closed at all times.

"I just wanted it to finish as soon as possible," she said on the witness stand.

The woman was found in a reportedly distraught state by a couple in the street outside the scene of the alleged crime. She told the court she is still having psychological treatment to deal with trauma from the alleged attack.