Thousands of people, led by the yellow CCOO and UGT trade unions, marched yesterday in many cities around the Spanish state to protest against the new austerity measures imposed by the EU, IMF and ECB troika’s bailout memorandum. At the end of Madrid’s demonstration, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Parliament building, where firemen made a cordon in front of riot police to prevent clashes from happening. Nonetheless, police hit protesters, arrested a firemen but failed to disperse the crowd, which was already exceeding the thousands.
Once firemen had left the place, cops managed to disperse the people by firing blanks and using batons. Suddenly, dozens of burning barricades were put up around the city’s centre, while cops kept chasing people in the surrounding streets. Clashes in the Lavapiés neighbourhood lasted until 2:00am. At least 15 people were arrested and 40 injured. One person was arrested in Barcelona for supposedly throwing bottles against cops.
Ed. note: we will not report neither promote protests by the state-owned trade unions CCOO and UGT, but we thought it was interesting enough to write about the clashes afterwards and how the unions’ controlled and monitored demonstrations were once again exceeded by the anger of many protesters.