Owner of bookstore selling Nazi books sentenced to 1.5 years in prison
Pedro Varela ran Europa in Barcelona from 2006 to 2016
The owner of the Europa bookstore in Barcelona between 2006 and 2016, Pedro Varela, has been sentenced to one-and-a-half years in prison for selling Nazi books.
The store was located in the Gracia neighborhood, and he was one of the leaders of the EO cultural association and Ediciones O, which distributed and sold Nazi material.
The Barcelona court has sentenced Varela to 18 months in prison for Holocaust denial, trivialization, and promoting crimes against humanity. He has also received a fine of €15 daily during the next seven months.
He was facing 12 years in prison and a € 10,800 fine. Along with Varela, five other individuals were accused of using the library, the association, and the editorial to spread "supremacist" views between 2006 and 2016. They were found not guilty.
Among other fines, Varela has been banned from holding any educational positions, as well as banned from editing, distributing, or selling books neither on-site nor online.
The trial started in May, years after the police Mossos d'Esquadra temporarily closed the bookstore, its websites, and social media profiles in 2016.
On the first day of the trial, Varela said he was "a mere bookstore owner."
He denounced the situation of "indefension" that bookstore owners faced and defined himself as a "convinced humanist". Varela said the books containing Nazi propaganda that police found in his home and shop were not for sale, but that he kept them because it is "uncivilized" to destroy literary works.
He also admitted that there was a sign in the library stating that some books could not be sold and that those who wanted to buy them had to sign a "responsibility" document.
"Who am I to say what can and cannot be read?" he said, arguing that he wanted to "offer readers books they could not find anywhere else."