A photo of a woman holding a cigarette and urinating on the ground has gone viral on social media. Some posts say that this is the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau. We decided to check the veracity of such signatures.
Photo separated on Russian and foreign social networks a few years ago. So, in 2017, many wrote that the mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau “conducts a direct action, like a leftist activist (urinating on the asphalt).” About this reported and some Media. Users also recall this “fact” to the official Telegram.
Ada Colau was elected mayor of Barcelona in 2015. Her numerous photographs are in the public domain, and if you compare photos, for example, from the Spanish politician’s own account in Instagram with the image being circulated, it becomes obvious that this is a completely different person.
A Google image search returned links to articles in several Spanish media outlets (e.g. El Pais And La Provincia), dated 2015. It states that in the photo - Agueda Banon, a femme activist who, shortly after Colau's election, was appointed as the new head of communications at Barcelona City Hall. Banyon, as they say in the same articles in Spanish publications, is an artist and activist working in the genre post-porn (proponents of this movement try to rethink pornography from a feminist point of view). According to media reports, from 2002 to 2007, she was one of the promoters of the Girls Who Like Porno project, a collective that criticized the traditional porn industry by publishing videos, holding seminars and performances.
Our fellow fact checkers at AFP contacted with Banyon - she confirmed that it was really her in the photo and that the picture had not been edited. However, she clarified that the photograph was taken at the Sonar festival in 2004, long before the girl took the position of press secretary at the Barcelona City Hall. “This image has been taken out of context and has been used repeatedly since 2015 to discredit my public image and that of Mayor Ada Colau, since she won the election and appointed me director of communications at Barcelona City Hall,” concluded Banón.
Some users in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet published viral photo, right indicating, who exactly is depicted on it, but distorting the meaning of the photo. A popular caption on such occasions reads: "Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau's press secretary took a piss in the city square to drive terrorism out of Catalonia." At the same time, the photo has nothing to do with the fight against terrorism; Banyon herself calls it a work of art, and it was taken, according to the official, not in Barcelona, but in Murcia. And indeed, in this city Google maps you can see a very similar place at Gran Va del Escultor Francisco Salzillo, 16.
Thus, in the photo is the press secretary of the Barcelona City Hall, Agueda Banon, and not the mayor Ada Colau herself. Moreover, the photo was taken long before Banyon took her position. The captions that it is aimed at fighting terrorism are also untrue - it was part of a performance as part of the festival. And besides, the photo is not at all the main square of Barcelona, as many users wrote, but one of the streets of the city of Murcia, located almost 600 km from Barcelona.
Cover photo: screenshot of a post in “VKontakte»
Not true
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