Barcelona is preparing itself for more protests on Saturday to call for a change to Spain's sexualt assault law. The protests have been organised following a Barcelona court's decision to acquit five men of raping a 14-year-old and instead find them guilty of the lesser charge of sexual abuse.

The decision to charge the five men, aged between 18 and 21, with sexual abuse, not rape, came about because the victim was in an 'unconscious state' during the attack. 

In Spain, sexual violence has to be accompanied by violence or intimidation to be considered rape. This has resulted in several incidents of gang rapists receiving lesser charges of sexual abuse, not rape. 

The Spanish feminist group, Asociación de Periodistas Feministas CyL (Association of Feminist Journalists), have called a protest in front of Barcelona city hall on 2 November at 1pm.

The 14-year-old victim was semi-conscious during the assault that took place during a Halloween party in an abandoned factory in Catalonia in 2016. In court, the girl claimed that she could not remember much of what happened that night but does remember one of the assailants holding a gun. 

The assailants received sentences between 10 to 12 years in prison for sexual abuse. They would have received a sentence of 15 to 20 years if they had been convicted of rape. 

The victim received €12,000 ($13,000) as compensation. 

This case is simlar to 'the wolf pack' attack in 2016 in which an 18-year-old was dragged into the hallway of a residential building and was raped by five men. The men videotaped the incident and shared it in a group chat that they called the 'wolf pack.’ 

Some activists have argued that Barcelona's court should have taken the 2016 rape case as a precedent. 

The victim had kept her eyes closed during the assault, and because of this, the court ruled that the attack wasn't violent and did not fit under the category of rape. Widespread protests over this decision took place and Spain's High Court overturned the original verdict, leading to the harsher sentence of rape.  

Feminists have been using the hashtags #NoEsAbusoEsViolación [It's not abuse, it's rape] and #JusticiaPatriarcal [Patriarchal justice] to express their frustration with the court's decision. 

Ada Colau, Barcelona's mayor, condemned the court's decision on twitter. She said: "Another outrageous sentence of the #JusticiaPatriarcal who does not want to understand that only YES is YES. 

"An unconscious 14-year-old girl was raped in a group. I am not a judge and I do not know how many years of prison they deserve, what I do know is that it is not abuse, it is rape!"