The mayor of a small town in central Spain has triggered outrage and been expelled from his party after he was caught on camera singing a song seen to celebrate paedophilia.
Antonio Martín Hernández, mayor of Vita in the province of Avila, took to a stage late at night during local festivities at the end of August and sang into a microphone the song of finding a young girl in a forest and undressing her. Members of the audience sang along to much of the song, which continued in an even more graphic fashion.
After a video of the incident was recorded by a member of the audience and circulated online, the minister for youth and childhood in the left-wing central government, Sira Rigo, described it as “repugnant”.
“Zero tolerance for rape culture,” she wrote on social media. “Zero tolerance for violence against children.”
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Pablo Fernández, spokesman for the left-wing Podemos party in the Castilla y León region where Vita is located, described Mr Hernández as a “lout” who was “apologising for paedophilia and rape”.
Mr Hernández’s own conservative Popular Party (PP) responded by describing his actions as “inadmissible” and expelling him.
The mayor himself posted a video statement appearing to express regret. “It’s a song which traditionally is sung during the festivities in Vita. It’s not about offending anyone. I have always respected women, girls and boys, everyone. Looking at the words of the song, it’s a song which, if anyone has been offended then I’m very sorry and I won’t sing it again.”
However, Mr Hernández has resisted calls for him to resign as mayor of the town, which has about 80 inhabitants. He has held the post since 2019, although until 2023 he represented the far-right Vox party.
An unexpected show of support for him came from the Catholic Church. The president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Luis Argüello, said that an opinion or song which “praised any kind of violence” was “reprehensible”. However, he also called for the case to be put in its context, “knowing what many village fiestas are like, knowing what happens in the early hours of the morning after drinking this, that and the other”.
Dr Argüello, who is also archbishop of Valladolid, warned that censoring the kind of song sung by Mr Hernández could create a dangerous trend. “We would have to go back over so many words, of so many songs, many of them in English, which are sung in our town and village festivities.”
He added that this could encourage “an excessively puritanical society in which any text, any lyric, can be condemned – none of which absolves the mayor of his responsibilities”.
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