Spanish police vacate hotel occupied by 100 protesters

Dec 5, 2011, 13:44 GMT

Madrid - Spanish police on Monday forcefully vacated a Madrid hotel which had been occupied by about 100 people linked to the country's Indignant Ones protest movement, police said.

About 200 police officers participated in the operation, using axes to break through the sealed doors of the hotel, which had been occupied for seven weeks.

Some of the squatters resisted the eviction, but no injuries were reported.

Police also vacated flats located above a theatre, where about 10 people had been squatting.

A total of around 10 people were detained on charges ranging from the possession of weapons, growing marijuana and being without a Spanish residence permit.

The hotel squatters were linked to the 'Indignados,' a young people's protest movement which brought tens of thousands of people to the streets on May 15 to demonstrate against Spain's soaring unemployment and the power of financial markets over politics.

The movement has continued staging protests since then.

The hotel in central Madrid, which had been closed to the public for several years, was occupied in order to lodge people who had lost their homes over unpaid rents.

Spain currently has an unemployment rate of 21.5 per cent, the European Union's highest. The economy has ground to a halt, and growing numbers of people are falling into poverty.