Spanish police have reportedly arrested four men and a boy on suspicion of drugging and sexually assaulting an underage girl at a resort in the Canary Islands.

Local media reports said the five suspects called themselves la nueva manada (the new wolfpack), after a gang that was jailed for sexually abusing an 18-year-old woman in Pamplona two years ago and released on bail to widespread outrage last week.

In defiance of a travel ban imposed by the court, one of the Pamplona attackers was caught trying to obtain a new passport days after handing over his documents as a condition for his provisional release, police said on Thursday.

Police have released few details about the latest incident, which took place last week, but El Diario reported that at least one of the suspects filmed the incident on his phone. The suspects are being held in the town of Maspalomas on Gran Canaria.

Marco Aurelio Pérez, the mayor of San Bartolomé de Tirajana where the incident took place, denounced what he described as “a totally intolerable, mean, vile” act, and said such incidents risked “dangerously awakening social anger”.

Women’s groups and the Spanish media have linked the case to the early release the previous day of the original “wolfpack”. That group got its name from a WhatsApp chat the men used to discuss their plans during the San Fermîn bull-running festival in 2016.

In April, José Ángel Prenda, Alfonso Cabezuelo, Antonio Manuel Guerrero, Jesús Escudero and Ángel Boza were sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment and five years’ probation and ordered to pay €10,000 (£8,800) each to the woman after being acquitted of rape but convicted of sexual abuse.

Both the sentence and the court proceedings – which allowed evidence of the victim’s personal life but excluded the perpetrators’ phone messages – provoked anger and nationwide protests at what many women denounced as a patriarchal justice system.



The men were found guilty of the continuous sexual abuse of the woman in the lobby of a building in the early hours of 7 July 2016, but the case was widely seen as a cross-examination of the victim.

Last week’s decision to free the five men while a higher court studied the sentence prompted further demonstrations by women’s groups in several cities including Pamplona, Madrid, Zaragoza, San Sebastián and Barcelona.

The 18-year-old victim of the Pamplona assault made her first public statement this week, which was read by a presenter on the Telecinco TV station. She urged all victims of sexual assault to speak out and report all abuse.

“Do it in whichever way you want, but tell your story,” she said. “Do not remain quiet because if you do, you are letting them win.”