A Barcelona court has acquitted five men accused of raping a 14-year-old girl of the most serious charges of sexual aggression and convicted them instead of sexual abuse on the grounds that the victim was under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

The five men were jailed for between 10 and 12 years on the charge of continuous sexual abuse. A sixth man was acquitted on the grounds that he had not actively participated in the incident, in the town of Manresa, in north-east Spain.

The prosecution had asked for the men to be convicted of sexual aggression, which carries a 15 to 20-year sentence, stating that the victim had been unable to defend herself. However, the court ruled the men “were able to carry out these sexual acts without resorting to violence or intimidation” because the victim was “in an unconscious state” from drugs and alcohol “and didn’t know what she was or wasn’t doing”.

The victim was awarded €12,000 (£10,300) compensation for an attack the court described as “extremely intense and particularly degrading”. The judges rejected a claim by the accused that they were unaware the girl was under 16 and so below the age of consent.

The attack took place at a party in an abandoned factory in October 2016.

The case has been dubbed the Manresa manada, after the notorious case of the five men calling themselves La Manada, or the “wolf pack”, who were jailed for 15 years earlier this year for the rape of an 18-year-old woman during the running of the bulls in Pamplona in 2016.

The Pamplona case led to an outcry and triggered protests across Spain after the five were initially cleared of gang rape but convicted of the lesser charge of sexual abuse.

In June, the supreme court in Madrid overturned the lower court’s verdict, ruling that the victim had been subjected to “a genuinely intimidating scenario in which she never consented to the sexual acts perpetrated by the accused”.

The case also prompted the then government to announce a review of Spain’s sexual offences legislation.

Altamira Gonzalo, of the women jurists’ group Themis, condemned Thursday’s verdict.

“The Barcelona court continues to believe that women must put up a heroic resistance,” Gonzalo said. “They have taken a benevolent view of men who, with their trousers round their ankles, took turns at raping a 14-year-old girl who, as well as being under the effects of alcohol, was in a situation where she couldn’t defend herself.”

She added: “The judges have had no difficulty seeing this from the point of view of the aggressors but that not of the victim.”

Viviana Waisman, president of the human rights group Women’s Link Worldwide, also expressed concerns over the verdict.

“From the media reports we’ve seen of the Maresa case, we believe that [the court] could have viewed the situation as intimidating for the victim, given she was a minor in an abandoned space with several attackers who were older than her,” said Waisman.

“The supreme court’s ruling in the Pamplona wolf pack case clarified the concept of ‘environmental intimidation’ and looked at things from a gender perspective.”

Given that, she added, the judges could have come to the conclusion that sexual aggression had been committed and ruled accordingly.

Giving evidence in July, the Manresa victim said one of the accused was a friend with whom she had had sexual relations a week earlier and whom she trusted. She said he was the one who led her to the shack where he raped her and then invited his friends to do likewise, telling them they each had 15 minutes.

While under English law sex with a minor is statutory rape whether consent is given or not, a lawyer at the Madrid branch of Women’s Link said that in Spain the question hinged on whether violence and intimidation were used, with the criteria the same for both minors and adults.