Police beat anti-austerity protesters in Barcelona, Spain
Spanish police yesterday fired rubber bullets and beat protesters with truncheons in a vicious attempt to clear anti-austerity demonstrators from the Plaza de Cataluna square in Barcelona.
The Catalan riot police attacked at around 6.45 am, after protesters staged a sit-in to stop a convoy of cleaning trucks leaving the square after dismantling their encampment, under police supervision. Demonstrators chanted, “They shall not pass!” Without warning, police moved in after firing tear gas canisters. Protesters were dragged away by police, and there are numerous reports of rubber bullets being fired. An official denied this, stating that police fired compressed-air guns that shoot blanks. Demonstrators reported that police officers were not wearing their identification numbers.
Around 100 protesters regrouped in the square, while hundreds more were prevented from doing so by police cordons. “We will return,” they chanted. In the face of determined resistance, the police eventually retreated and thousands flooded the square, though numbers later dwindled. A report in the Financial Times gave a glimpse of the police brutality. “Protesters described a crowd of several hundred slowly walking towards a group of police hitting a woman with a baton. The crowd clapped and chanted ironically: 'This is your democracy!’”
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