LGBTphobia Experiences in Girona. Challenges and Limits on the Hate Crime and Hate Speech Policies in Catalonia

In recent years, in Spain, several juridical and political measures have been deployed against which has been tagged as "hate crimes". The aim of these initiatives has been to try to put a stop to discrimination towards certain social groups particularly vulnerable, which are the object of different forms of violence, as is the case of lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual people (LGBT), among others. In this article, these measures are analysed from a social perspective which problematises the limits of juridical conceptions of hate crimes, in the sense that they tend to individualise social practices rooted in the social and cultural Spanish (and European) model. In it we critically reflect upon the juridical report as a favourite measure to face anti-LGBT violence, and finally we discuss the limitations in the forms of assistance of anti-LGBT people hate crime victims. For this reason, we carried out a qualitative research based in 28 in depth interviews to LGBT people as well as stakeholders, as well as two focus groups.