NBC News: Barcelona: People took to the streets of Spain's biggest cities on Monday evening to express their anger at the death of a man in a suspected homophobic attack at the weekend.

Crowds filled a central Madrid square and activists marched down a major street in Barcelona, chanting slogans and waving placards and rainbow-colored flags.

"The response to the wave of LGBT-phobic hatred that ended the life of Samuel in A Coruna is overwhelming," the left-wing Podemos party that governs in coalition with the ruling Socialists wrote on Twitter.

Samuel Luiz, a 24-year-old nursing assistant (See photo above), was beaten near a nightclub in the early hours of Saturday in the town of A Coruna, northern Spain, by several assailants including one who shouted a common pejorative description of a gay person. He later died in the hospital.

Interior Ministry data shows 278 hate crimes related to sexual orientation or gender identity were reported in Spain in 2019, an 8.6 percent increase on the previous year. It is known that only a fraction of hate crimes are reported to the police. (The read the full article with photos, Click Here.)