Five gay men were attacked in three separate incidents in Barcelona over the weekend. One of the victims required facial surgery after being assaulted on a beach in the Catalonian city.

In the previously mentioned incident, the man was sitting on the beach with his boyfriend and another gay couple when a group of four men approached and started calling them homophobic slurs. They then began to physically assault them and spit on them. The man who requires surgery suffered a fractured jaw.

The Observatory Against Homophobia (OCH) said they were very concerned by the incident and the increasing amount of violence against LGBTQ+ people in Catalonia. 

“It is a spiral to which we are not accustomed – it is of extreme violence,” Eugeni Rodriguez, president of the OCH, said. “It is terrible that, after the pandemic, we are in this situation.”

He also told of how the LGBTQ+ community is “dismayed and worried.” He explained that the victims “are not well and are afraid.” The assailants managed to escape, but an investigation has been opened to clarify the facts and arrest them.

“We will never normalize this situation,” tweeted the head of Citizenship Rights of the Barcelona City Council, Marc Serra Solé.

The OCH says that there has been 75 homophobic attacks in Catalonia this year so far.

The other attacks on gay men in Barcelona over the weekend took place in the district of Gràcia on Saturday morning where a young man reported being kicked unprovoked and another later in the day near the city’s auditorium where a man was insulted and physically assaulted, the OCH said.

Catalonia’s equality minister, Tània Verge, also condemned the violence and tweeted that fighting homophobia was a high priority for her department.

Jaume Collboni, First Deputy Mayor of the Barcelona City Council said: “Maximum force in the sentence and all the support to the victims. Barcelona is a tolerant and respectful city with diversity.”