Police in Madrid, Spain, deployed tear gas and rubber bullets on Tuesday night against a protest that reportedly attracted 7,000 people to the front of the headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party of Spain (PSOE), objecting to a proposed amnesty for Catalonian separatist rioters and taunting police with anti-Muslim chants.
The protests are a result of several failed attempts by lawmakers in Parliament to form a government, as elections in July did not give President Pedro Sánchez, the head of the PSOE, enough seats in Parliament to govern. Spain’s conservatives are largely split between the establishment center-right People’s Party (PP) and the populist conservative party Vox, which collectively secured more seats than the leftist block of the PSOE and Sumar but also fell short of a governing majority.
In an attempt to form a functional governing coalition, Sánchez began floating the possibility in October of offering legal amnesty to violent rioters arrested during a wave of separatist activity in northern Catalonia in 2019.
“A national election in July left no party close to an absolute majority and with Sánchez in need of the support of several smaller parties to stay in power,” the Associated Press explained in October. “Those include two pro-secession Catalan parties who led the unsuccessful 2017 breakaway attempt and who now find themselves holding the key votes in Parliament that Sánchez requires.”
“Catalonia is ready for total reunion. Representatives of more than 80 percent of Catalans support this measure,” Sánchez said of his proposed amnesty. “And for those same reasons, in the name of Spain, in the interest of Spain, in defense of coexistence among Spaniards, I defend today the amnesty in Catalonia for the events that occurred in the past decade.”
The agreement has triggered a wave of protests nationwide from Spaniards who oppose separatism, many of them conservative voters. The protests in Madrid last night began as an anti-amnesty manifestation, though protesters more broadly objected to the PSOE and socialism.
Videos taken at the scene on Ferraz Street in Madrid, where the PSOE hub is located, show large crowds of people waving Spanish flags, organized behind a barricade erected to protect the building. Chants of “Pedro Sánchez, son of a bitch” were audible, as were other insults to the socialists and chants such as “Spain can’t be sold, it must be defended.”
Some videos circulating of what appears to be the event on Tuesday, though yet unconfirmed independently, show the crowd chanting “Spain is Christian, not Muslim,” a chant that has become common in conservative Spanish circles against the large influx of migrants from Africa and the Middle East.
The Spanish newspaper El País documented taunts against the police from protesters as officers turned violent, manhandling protesters and using tear gas. Among the taunts Spain’s paper of record documented against officers were “Spain united will never be defeated” – a nationalist take on the communist slogan “the people united will never be defeated” – and “with the Moors, you have no balls,” implying that police do not use similar force against Muslim protesters.
El País also documented a similar protest in Valencia in which anti-socialist crowds insulted Sánchez and similarly denounced the increasing number of Muslim migrants in the country, reportedly chanting the “Moors” slogan and “Spain is Christian, never Muslim.”
The Spanish newspapers ABC and El Mundo reported that the Madrid protest appeared to turn violent around 10 p.m. local time when an alleged group of “ultra” extremist disruptors appeared to throw projectiles at police. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, and physical attempts to disrupt the alleged violence.
El Mundo documented what appeared to be an instance of police abuse against a young woman at the event, who they dragged by the hair to a police vehicle.
“I need to go with my children … I have to go home to my children, I wanted to go home and they didn’t let me pass,” the woman can be heard saying, to which an officer replied, “you are under arrest, shut up.”
The video does not offer context for what happened immediately prior to the woman’s arrest.
ABC, citing police sources, noted that the use of tear gas for such an event was highly unusual in the country and that police rarely received approval to use the noxious agent. The newspaper suggested that the green light for its use was given when police officers recognized known agitators blending into an otherwise peaceful crowd of protesters. Some sources told ABC that the use of tear gas had to have been approved by the government in Madrid, not merely by high-ranking police officers.
Police documented six arrests on Tuesday night, 30 injured police officers, and about a dozen injured protesters.
Conservative political leaders rapidly condemned the violence. “We came to protest peacefully, no violent act has our backing,” Pepa Millán, a spokeswoman for Vox, said on Tuesday night.
“Violence has no place in democracy and should always be rejected,” the head of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, wrote in a statement on Wednesday.
The PP has convened another protest against the Sánchez amnesty on Sunday.