Barcelona Bus Driver on Trial for Alleged Veil Removal and Discrimination

Hanan and her children will have a hard time forgetting this "humiliation" they suffered on May 29, 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, as they were traveling on a public bus in Barcelona. Claiming an expired ticket, the driver hurled insults at the woman, then forced her and her children to get off the bus, before trying to tear off the scarf that covered her head. "He tried to remove my veil to humiliate me," Hanan testified on Tuesday at the trial.

The eldest of Hanan’s three children, now 17 years old and also wearing a veil like her mother, recounts to El País how this episode affected their lives. "I continue to take the bus to go to school, but when I think I can live the same thing..." she says. Her sister, who was nine years old at the time, had started having nightmares and wetting the bed. And the youngest, who was barely three years old, refuses to board the "red buses", the color of the public bus in which the incident took place.

For the prosecution, the driver "humiliated" the Moroccan woman and her children, because his racist behavior exposed them "to mockery" from the other passengers on the bus and "undermined their dignity". After forcing the family to get off before their destination, the driver, who pretended to start the bus, turned off the engine and got off to pull the woman’s veil while filming the scene with his phone. "He called me a b*tch, a bitch... I was out of my mind, I was afraid," Hanan said.

"He pulled my hair. At that time, I wasn’t wearing the veil yet," the eldest daughter recounted. The accused denied the facts, stating that he had never touched the woman and that she had gotten off the bus of her own free will. The driver claims that it was rather the woman who threatened him when he got off the bus and that he had gotten off to take a photo of her as proof. "People of all backgrounds and religions get on my bus and they’ve never had any problems with me," adds the driver, who denies having any hatred against Muslims in his 15-year career.