EU against austerity: Protesters clash with police amid unrest in Spain, Portugal
The Iberian Peninsula has once again been engulfed in protest, as police used brute force to disperse thousands in front of the Spanish Parliament in Madrid while in Portugal citizens climbed on top of a tank to make themselves heard.
Police detained at least 15 in Madrid, including one minor, as they used force to quell an angry mob of protesters near the Spanish parliament, united under a “Besiege Congress” slogan calling for the government to quit. The riots come as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is set to announce a raft of measures on Friday aimed at tackling the country's recession. An estimated 1,400 policemen were deployed around the chamber as politicians cancelled the session for the day. Protesters held signs that read “6.2 million reasons” in a reference to the latest jobless figures and when police charged them they chanted “You have jobs, we do not.” Law enforcement charged the protesters with batons and shot blanks in the air as the demonstrators threw bottles and rocks at the police. The protest coincided with the latest jobless rate announcement that stands at a record high of 27.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013, according to National Statistics Institute. The number of unemployed is now 6.2 million as the Spanish economy finds it impossible to climb out of the burst property bubble of 2008.
Bloomberg: Spain Jobless Rate Breaches 27% on Recession Woes - Spanish unemployment rose more than economists forecast in the first quarter to the highest in at least 37 years as efforts to tackle the European Union’s biggest budget deficit crimped economic growth. - The number of jobless increased to more than 6 million for the first time, climbing to 27.2 percent of the workforce, compared with 26.02 percent in the previous three months, the National Statistics Institute in Madrid said today. That was more than the 26.5 percent median forecast of eight economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will tomorrow unveil measures aimed at halting a six-year economic slump. Spain’s recession dragged into a seventh quarter in the first three months of 2013, leaving the country with more than a fifth of all jobless people in the EU.