A man has been arrested by the Spanish police on suspicion of sexual assault after he appeared to touch a TV journalist on the bottom as she was reporting live from the streets of Madrid.
The man approached Isa Balado, a journalist for the “En boca de todos” program on Spain’s Cuatro channel, as she was reporting on an alleged robbery on Tuesday.
The man while approaching her appeared to touch her bottom as she was talking to presenter Nacho Abad in the studio. Meanwhile, Balado tried to continue before Abad asked her if the man had touched her bottom.
When Balado said he did, Abad asked her to put “this stupid guy” on camera.
The camera then zooms out to show Balado and the man.
“Do you really need to touch my bum?” she asked, before telling him that she’s live on television. “I’d like you to let me work.”
He continued to talk to her, before reaching his hand out to rub her on the head and then eventually walking away while Balado continued with the rest report.
In a statement by Balado who gave an account of the incident narrated:
“It’s very unpleasant, particularly when you are working,” she said, before the camera panned to show the man standing on the street with another man.
He then approached Balado again and attempted to talk to her before she asked to cut the broadcast.
The incident had generated widespread criticism as well as condemnation from Spanish politicians, including labor minister Yolanda Díaz.
“Machismo means that journalists suffer sexual assaults like this and that the aggressors appear in front of the camera unrepentantly,” Díaz wrote in a Tuesday post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This can’t go unpunished.”
“Non-consensual touching is sexual violence,” she wrote in a post on X Tuesday. “Only yes means yes.”
However, the equality Minister Irene Montero has also lent her voice in support for Balado.
