Concern mounts in Spain over violent protests

Jun 16, 2011, 10:39 GMT

Madrid - Concern was mounting in Spain on Thursday over a violent turn taken by a protest movement demanding democratic reforms.

The violence represented 'a very dangerous mixture of anti-system (activism) and anti-democratic radicalism,' Ramon Jauregui, a minister for the prime minister's office, said following clashes which injured more than 40 people in Barcelona.

The movement had been viewed sympathetically.

But on Wednesday, demonstrators in Barcelona trying to prevent a regional parliamentary debate on social spending cuts attacked legislators going to the meeting, shouting insults and death threats, pushing them, spraying some of them with paint and even trying to take away the guide dog of a blind lawmaker.

The violence forced several legislators to arrive by helicopter in front of the parliament building. Police charged against protesters, six of whom were arrested.

The violence was condemned unanimously by the political parties and by many followers of the protest movement itself.

The movement was drifting to an 'openly anti-democratic' direction, the daily El Pais said in an editorial, while a columnist in El Mundo described the violent protesters as 'fascist.'

'This is an ideological and political battle, not a physical one,' said one participant, who attributed Wednesday's incidents to 'a few violent ones.'

The movement, known as 15-M, was launched by young activists on May 15, one week before Spain's local and regional elections.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demand action on unemployment, which in Spain is at 20 per cent, corruption and the power of financial markets over politics.

Protesters subsequently occupied central squares in dozens of cities and towns. Most of the protest camps have now been dismantled, while the movement is reorienting itself towards street protests and neighbourhood assemblies.

The movement had been viewed sympathetically by many Spaniards, with 90 per cent of them agreeing with the goal of political parties changing their way of functioning, according to a recent poll.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist government treated the movement with silken gloves, refraining from dispersing the protest camp at Madrid's Puerta del Sol square despite demands from local shopkeepers and the opposition conservatives.

However, clashes then broke out in Barcelona, where about 120 people were injured in late May, and in Valencia in early June.

Wednesday's violence in Barcelona was seen as having crossed a 'red line' and as discrediting the 15-M movement.

The future of the movement now depended on its capacity to control violent tendencies, the daily El Periodico concluded.

New demonstrations were Thursday held in the eastern city of Valencia, where about 100 people staged a sit-in protest against the inauguration as regional prime minister of Francisco Camps, who is under investigation for corruption.

The protest opened peacefully under tight security, in contrast to the violence in Barcelona on Wednesday.