Madrid-Spain’s Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto said on Monday that he had received a knife covered in red stains by mail, and police announced that he had identified the suspect.
The El Pais, Lasexta TV, and other media said the main suspect was a man with mental health problems and police did not link the case to a recent series of murder threats against other public figures. I reported.
Reuters could not independently confirm these reports.
When Maroto said he had received the baggage, politicians across the political spectrum first issued a warning. She said the knife arrived on Friday and had a return address on the package.
National police have identified the person who allegedly sent the knife and said an investigation was underway.
According to LaSexta and other media, investigators said the suspect was mailed last week to Interior Minister Fernando Grande Marasca, Pablo Iglesias of Unidas Podemos, and Maria Gamez, who heads Guardia Civil Police. I believed that it had nothing to do with the threat.
Without suggesting who was behind those previous letters, Marlaska blamed the culture of political polarization on Monday for allowing hate speech to flourish.
He linked the threat to the recent vandalism of Madrid’s feminist murals and the tampering of the statue of former socialist Prime Minister Francisco Largo Caballero.
“All this creates the belief that it’s okay to discriminate against a particular group,” he said on Lasexta’s television.
Tensions between right and left have increased in recent weeks ahead of the local elections in Madrid, where the conservative incumbent Isabel Diaz Ayusso runs under the slogan “Communism or Freedom”. ..
Iglesias, who opposes her for Unidas Podemos on the far left, left the debate on Friday after Rossio Monasterio, an opponent of the far-right Vox party, asked if the threat was true last week.
Nationally, the Spanish government is led by the Socialist Party (PSOE), with Unidas Podemos as its junior coalition partner.
Beren Carreño and Nathan Allen