Racist Comments Flood Social Media After Moroccan Man’s Fatal Train Accident in Spain

The incident occurred last Tuesday. The young Moroccan climbed onto a high-speed train wagon at the Lleida-Pyrenees station and was electrocuted by touching the catenary, reports Infobae. A few hours later, an Internet user posted on the social network X the video showing the victim agonizing until he died. The post sparked a wave of racist comments targeting the Moroccan community in Spain.

Choice excerpts: "Too bad there was only one," "One less," "A minute of silence for the aggression suffered by the catenary. Having to put up with Moorish meat must be very hard." These hateful messages towards the Moroccan were outraged by other Internet users who deplored the inaction of the railway company agents who were nevertheless present on the platform, according to the video posted on X.

According to the spokesman for the public company Adif, the incident occurred in the early evening, after two people managed to enter unauthorized areas of the Lleida station. The Mossos d’Esquadra and Civil Protection confirmed that the two climbed onto the roof of a wagon. The first received a 40,000 volt shock and the second was seriously injured and taken to the Arnau de Vilanova hospital in Lleida.

The most common hate messages "tend to be those with a racist motivation, those that refer to skin color, the main discriminated groups being Blacks, people of Moroccan origin and Roma," indicates the NGO specialized in the care of refugees, migrants and people threatened with social exclusion, in a study published in 2023.