AN American tourist has told The Olive Press how the manager of one of Madrid’s best-known flamenco clubs insisted she ‘go back to Africa’ before physically assaulting her.
The shocking incident also saw the Spanish man allegedly ‘push his crotch’ into her face and threaten to ‘rape her mother’, the woman said.
Flight attendant Andrea Jones, 59, reported the incident to police after visiting Torres Bermejas, a famous venue, in August last year.
Jones, from New York, had asked manager Diego Rojo if she could move seats because she could not properly see the stage.
Instead, she claims, he ‘flew off the handle’, telling her she looked like a Nigerian and should ‘go back to Africa’.
He then allegedly kicked her out of the venue and threatened to rape her mother.
“It was insane,” Jones told The Olive Press. “All I did was politely ask if I could move seats, and he replied that I looked like a Nigerian and that I should instead get out.
“That level of racism is just off the charts.”
But the confrontation allegedly continued outside when Jones realised she had left a bag inside the club – where flamenco legends Cameron and Paco de Lucia first met – only for Rojo to refuse to hand it back.
According to her police complaint, he then struck her several times in the head.
Rojo also forced her against a wall and pushed his crotch against her face, Jones alleged.
Police eventually made the club return her bag and sent Jones to hospital after she complained of a severe headache following the incident.
Jones, meanwhile, is certainly not the only customer to have encountered Rojo’s racism.
In July this year, another group of Black Americans filmed him telling them they smelled and should ‘go back to their country’.
One of them later published a text exchange in which he allegedly told her to ‘go back to the jungle’. The video subsequently went viral.
Torres Bermejas told the Olive Press it launched an investigation and fired its floor manager on August 6.
The club says it only became aware of Jones’s separate complaint on September 13 and insists police did not contact them before.
A lawyer for the club said the owners ‘categorically reject’ racism, discrimination or abusive behaviour.
Jones, however, believes the club should have acted sooner.
“Either they don’t know what’s going on at their business, or they only care when the video went viral,” she said.
A TikTok video Rojo posted on July 28 attempted to tackle the issue, when he asked a south American club employee to speak to his followers.
He wrote: “With one of my employees of colour, myself included. Stupidity doesn’t care about skin colour and it has to be called out and confronted.”
He signed it off: “Welcome to the jungle.”
Click here to read more Madrid News from The Olive Press.
