Justice Rejects Halting Publication of Book on Bretón

On Wednesday, the Barcelona Court upheld a decision made on March 24 by a first-instance court in the Catalan capital, which rejected halting the publication of the book 'El odio', written by Luisgé Martín, in which José Bretón confesses to killing his two children. The Prosecutor's Office appealed the Barcelona court's decision, but the Provincial Court has now dismissed this appeal from the Public Ministry.

In any case, days ago, the book's publisher, Anagrama, announced that it indefinitely suspended the publication of the work, although it stated that it remained committed to "respecting the request for precautionary measures sought by the Prosecutor's Office to halt the distribution of the work." The publisher considered that, in a democratic society, there must be a "balance between creative freedom as a fundamental right and the protection of victims." The controversy and social debate surrounding the work pressured the publisher in making its decision.

The Prosecutor's Office justified that the publication of the book could cause "irreversible harm or injury" to the mother. "Sufficient documentation has been provided to the judge to assess, foresee, and conclude with due rigor and total certainty that there is indeed a serious and imminent risk of unlawful interference with the right to honour," argued the Prosecutor's Office in its appeal.

The Barcelona Court is sympathetic to the Prosecutor's Office but rejects the appeal. "One cannot ignore the circumstances surrounding this incident nor the special protection that victims deserve, but civil procedural law does not contain mechanisms that allow for the request made by the Public Ministry in accordance with the reasons stated," the court notes.

In Luisgé Martín's book, José Bretón explains how he killed his children, aged 6 and 2, in 2011. The children's mother, Ruth Ortiz, requested that the Córdoba Prosecutor's Office halt the book's publication, scheduled for March 26, and warned that she would take legal action if the work was not removed from bookstores. The case moved from the Córdoba Prosecutor's Office to the Barcelona Prosecutor's Office because Anagrama Publishing is based in the Catalan capital. According to the Provincial Court, in the justification for rejecting the appeal, the aim of the precautionary measures was to suspend the book's publication "prior to the filing of a potential lawsuit based on interference with the right to honour, personal privacy, and

family and personal image."