Fresh outrage in Spain as ‘wolf pack’ rapist’s sentence is reduced under botched law: ‘It’s a joke’

The appalling gang-rape of a young woman at the Pamplona festival in 2016 forced a change in the law, writes Graham Keeley in Madrid. But it also left a loophole that has led to more than 1,000 sentence reductions in prison time for sex crime convicts

Protests against the initial verdict in the ‘wolf pack’ case in 2018 (Getty Images)

It was a case that shocked Spain. The gang-rape of an 18-year-old woman at the running of the bulls festival in Pamplona in 2016 by a group of five men who called themselves the “wolf pack“ in their WhatsApp group.

Shock turned to outrage when the men were initially convicted of the lesser offence of sexual abuse, because the court ruled the victim did not resist out of fear. Nationwide protests followed and in 2019, the Spanish Supreme Court overturned the original decision and jailed the men for rape and raised their sentences from nine to 15 years.

The outcry over the case led to a change in the law which was supposed to give women greater protection. Last year, Spain’s left-wing coalition government brought in a consent law known as “only yes means yes”, which reformed the criminal code to define all non-consensual sex as rape.