Over the last few years, police in Madrid have initiated an aggressive crackdown on drugs, citing public health concerns. Now gay men in the city are speaking out, accusing the police of profiling and targeting them in humiliating drug searches.
On February 11, Spanish newspaper Público published interviews with three gay men (all speaking anonymously under pseudonyms) who say they were accosted by police over suspected drug use. While Spanish authorities have maintained that they are only conducting investigations in “areas and spaces where they believe there may be a criminal act,” the targets of police searches tell a different story.
The first, Luis, received a message from undercover police on a dating app specifically asking him to bring drugs to a location. Once he did, he was arrested, strip searched, and sentenced to three and half years in prison. The sentence was reduced only after he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking.
Related
Texas v Becerra is a huge assault on disability rights
Join the frontline of change
Be informed, be inspired, and be part of the conversation that’s shaping a queerer world with our newsletter.
“What we’re seeing here is police [inciting] queer men to commit crimes and then arresting them for committing those crimes these police [incited] in the first place,” journalist and anthropologist Christo Casas explained on the Al Jazeera podcast The Take.
The second, Alberto, was stopped and aggressively questioned in the middle of a gay club by plainclothes policemen without any apparent motivation. They found drugs he’d attempted to throw away after he removed himself from the encounter. He was arrested and made to strip and spread his buttocks in front of eight other officers. Following a nine month legal process, the GHB (liquid ecstasy), ketamine, and mephedrone (along with a bag of cocaine he alleges police planted) police found were determined for personal use, and the case did not go to trial.
The third, Daniel, was searched while in line for a gay club. Police found GHB and he spent two nights in jail before being released. “I was clearly stopped on the street because of the way I looked and where I was,” Daniel recalled. He has since changed his personal appearance when going out. “I’ve learned that if you look too gay, you can be stopped and searched,” he said.
Spanish politicians have justified the increased police searches as being in service of public health. Yet although using drugs used for partying and sex is by no means limited to the gay community (Casas explains that “fiesta blanca,” or cocaine use during sex, is a well-known subculture among straight couples in Spain), queer-coded drugs like ketamine face lower possession thresholds for drug trafficking charges when compared to ‘normalized’ drugs like cocaine.
Even if public health were the true concern, terrorizing recreational drug users is far from the only solution. “What countries like Portugal have shown us in history is that if you want to address drugs as a public health issue, you cannot harass the consumers. You cannot prosecute them through police,” Casas said. “You have to help with public health policies, like for example responsible consumption or giving free mental health care to the consumers so they will stop consuming or they will slow down their consumption.”
“If you check the data,” Cases added, “every time you use police to prosecute consumers of drugs, what happens is that there is an [increase] of dangers, that people consume in more dangerous circumstances, that they consume worse substances and then there are bigger health issues.
“So the point here is that the government of Madrid is saying that this is not about gay people, it’s about public health and drugs. What the policies they are applying, the police harassment, it’s actually increasing the risk. It’s actually making the situation worse.”
Sign up for the INTO newsletter and get your twice-weekly dose of stories that shape the queer experience, culture, and lifestyle.
