Spain reels at violent tactics by riot police
Officers lash out at passengers and austerity protesters as they storm into Madrid rail station
The middle-aged man sitting on a railway station bench protects a younger man by wrapping his arms around him as he shouts desperately at the helmeted, baton-wielding police officers running up and down the platforms at Madrid's Atocha station.
"Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!" he bellows repeatedly in a video that shows how police charged into the station during violent demonstrations that shook Madrid last week.
On the other side of the ticket barrier a younger man is whacked with truncheons by two policemen. "I don't know whether he is a passenger or a protester," one of them admits. A third man who was waiting for a train is bundled down the platform by police officers as he asks: "And what have I done?" A youth points to blood running down his face. "What the hell is this?" he asks.
On Friday, police told a judge they had needed to chase a group of violent protesters across the railway tracks and had later arrested some in a nearby bar. They, too, had suffered injuries. "People who had been hurling stones at police tried to hide in the station, passing themselves off as normal passengers," a spokesman said. "We had to go in."
As Spaniards respond with dismay to the violence shown by demonstrators, who launched attacks on police, and the response of some riot police, during scuffles in the area around Madrid's parliament building last week, the long-running drama of the country's deflating economy has lurched into a newly confrontational stage, amid fears that there will be more violence to come.
While police and the conservative government of prime minister Mariano Rajoy were accused of authoritarian behaviour, radical protesters from both the far left and the far right were putting a hard, street-fighting edge on to the once peaceful protests of the civilised but ineffectual indignados.
Cristina Cifuentes, the government delegate in Madrid, had warned before the protests that they were being infiltrated by violent members of Spain's far right and were attracting the country's most radical leftwingers. But protesters later pointed to a group of undercover policemen who, they claimed, had been at the front of the protest waving red flags and encouraging others to violence.
Other police certainly thought their undercover colleagues were troublemakers, and there is also film of one of them being dragged out of the crowd to be arrested and shouting: "I am a colleague! I am a colleague!"
On Saturday, a 72-year-old man was among some 30 demonstrators who had been accused of attacking police and given bail. "But I was sitting down when they arrested me," he said.
The radicalisation came amid worries that the ratings agency Moodys would downgrade Spain's creditworthiness, reigniting the pressure on its debt and sending the interest rates that it must pay spiralling up again.
Ministers have said that €10bn (£8bn) of cuts and tax increases must come in next year's budget just to cover a leap in interest payments. On Friday night, they said a coming round of bank bailouts, paid for by the eurozone rescue fund, would send the country's debts soaring by some €50bn. Spending is to be cut by 7% next year, bringing another wave of cuts in health, education and other welfare services. Yesterday, Spain's civil servants heard that, for the third year running, their wages were being frozen.
A period of calm in Europe's more troubled economies created by the European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, when he announced plans to buy the debt of countries who asked for bailouts in the future, also seemed to have come to an end. And with the threat of Catalan separatism adding to worries about Rajoy's ability to control events in Spain, many now expect him to ask for a full bailout for the country – placing it in the hands of those who have forced Greece, Portugal and Ireland into round after round of spending cuts.
Budget minister Cristóbal Montoro presented an austerity budget to parliament on Saturday, with analysts widely seeing it as an attempt to pre-empt the conditions that Spain would have had imposed on it anyway for the bailout. "Reducing our budget deficit is essential," he said.
With unemployment at 25%, however, and the economy already set to shrink for the next two years, Spaniards see no end to the tunnel of misery.
Editor; The banksters have purposefully created the banking crisis using derivatives and other dishonest economic instruments meant to destroy the working and middle-classes lives. When we are all bankrupt, they come in and buy up the land and the infrastructure at pennies on the dollar. They wish to steal everything and make themselves God. They wish to throw peoples' lives into turmoil , then they march in with their goon slave-dog pig armies and enslave us all as the rich elites have always done, just like the Nazis and the Reds and the bloody Royals have done. The answer is this; moratorium on all derivative class debts, take the money away from the elites , take the Illuminati including the Queen and the Rothschildes etc to jail and throw away the key. Free the technology hidden by the break-away civilization, and destroy totally their underground hideaways and weapons. We already see Von Rumpoy and Draghi and other slaves of the Illuminati installed as puppet dictators, and freedom and prosperity revoked by the evil demonic classes. If they do not back down, we shall collectively need to kill all of them. The Krsna Movement in general is too dumbed down and enslaved and cowardly to overthrow even the petty slobbering poisoners, so do not expect anything real from that bunch of cowards. Only a chosen few can understand all this.
Great photo from the 30s. Is that about the era that Rmoney is tryig to ‘restore’ us to? Or is it more the Robber-Barron Gilded Age?
That’s not the 30′s. That’s Obama’s economy today.
People like you, zippy, are what is wrong with America today. You are probably one of those people who vote strictly party lines and have never given a thought to doing anything else. You have no ability with your limited brain to think about what might be or should have been, only what your union bosses tell you. So sad that people like you are contributing to the demise of our country.
Look at modern photo’s of Detroit,Camden,Philly, Chicago etc. Thats what Obama wants for America. Crime-Poverty and Bad Schools. Thats what Dems have been doing in our inner cities for 70 yrs
Hi Zippy – still drinking the coolaid aren’t you. Pretty sure that the mess we are in belongs to Obama. Let’s chat about Romney for a minute as you libs see him as the antiObama – successful, strong religous background, contributes 4 mil to charity, Businessman – does pay taxes guaranteed 10X more than you do.
Gee … if he were elected we would release restrictions on small biz, have a healthcare program that worked, everyone would probably pay taxes and we would once again gain respect from teh thrid rate dictators that basiclly piss on Obama and laugh.
Right on Comrade! Romney wants the serfs to have no jobs so that they are all reliant on the Gov’t. He wants no means of birth control so that all women must abstain from sex or face the consequences of an illegitimate child. He wants the elderly to starve and have no health care – culling the herd, so to speak. Romney…he sucks….BAD!!! Now gimme my dam Obama Phone!!!
Romney has not done anything to hurt our economy, he is just a candidate. Who has been president the last four years?
Obama-Epic Failure: Gasoline $3.80… up 107.6%
Unemployment 8.3%… up 3.7%
Democrats boo and try to evict God at DNC.
Democrats pay tribute to Russian Navy at DNC.
Food Stamp Recipients 46.7 million… up 31.7%
More Americans Now Commit Suicide than Die in Car Crashes as Miserable Economy Takes Its Toll
United States Ambassador to Libya and 3 staff KILLED BY MUSLIMS.
Obama knew of terrorist attack but went to Las Vegas for a fund raiser
Then Obama chooses ‘The View’ over private meetings at the UN
Mob attacks US Embassy and burns flag in Egypt. Four More Years… Really?
Benghazi-Gate: New Evidence White House Lied About Libya Terror Attack
Voting for Obama again is like backing up the Titanic and taking another run at the iceberg. Do you really expect different results? Vote American This Time!
Milt, I am in full agreement. I just don’t get it, why would anyone want to reelect a lame duck president with a terrible record? Obama ignored the plea for jobs for the first 3 years in office. What makes anyone think he would do anything in a second term. He is the best con man I have ever seen.
…….Katsquan
Lets not forget the Turkish Fighter jets that were flying in teh background too!
43 months of unemployment above 8 percent, 8.2 million people working part-time who want full-time work, a record 88 million Americans not in the labor force, 1.5 percent GDP growth in the past quarter, more bad GDP numbers expected, a stagnant housing market, $5 trillion in new debt, the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, 38 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, 45 million Americans on food stamps, food prices continuing to increase dramatically, the poverty level likely to rise to the highest level in nearly fifty years The recession that ended three years ago this summer has been followed by the feeblest economic recovery since the Great Depression.. … … and this means the plan “worked? The shine is off the Hope and Change, it’s now just Hype and Blame, so you’ll be going away come this November. Maybe you can get your old job back as a Community Organizer, best stick to something you know how to do.
Here are some real world numbers of the past 3.5 years that the president can’t spin:
• Women in poverty has skyrocketed to 17,000,000, up 800,000
• 7,500,000 women are in extreme poverty,
• 25% of Hispanic women are in poverty
• 2,500,000 women over 65 are in poverty
• Most of the job losses under Obama have been women (780,000), who have now left the workforce
• Official black unemployment rates are 14.4 (actually much higher)
• Official black youth unemployment rates are 40%
• Official Hispanic unemployment rates are 11 (actually much higher)
American Blacks and Hispanics have been led down a dangerous path by the Pied Pipers of the left. Their only hope for a brighter future is to reject the new plantation bosses of the Democratic Party and to move to traditional American values and politics, which provide personal liberty and economic freedom for all.
Obama loves the poor so much he created MORE OF THEM