2011-07-05 More police violence in #Spain, evictions in eight squares #spanishrevolution #europeanrevolution

Over the past days the Spanish National Police force has coordinated to evict many of the squares that continued to be occupied by the 15M movement. The squares in Palma de Mallorca, Manacor, Santa Cruz de Tenerfe, Badajoz, Castellon, Gandia and las Palmas have been emptied forcefully and cleaned up. The last one to fall was the camp in Valencia, which was evicted early in the morning, at around 5.30 am local time and without warning. Most of the camps were small and the people staying there were coordinating the information booth left in most squares, as well as other permanent activities. This made most evictions easy and pacific.

In Santa Cruz de Tenerife (in the Canary Islands) and Palma de Mallorca (in the Balearic Islands), however, police forces displayed the same un-called for violence that is becoming a symptomatic reaction of Governments across Europe. In Santa Cruz eyewitnesses described police actions as “something brutal, like a gale. They charged into an area where there were many minors. It was very violent, I saw how a girl was hit with a stick and she started to vomit blood”. In the end a total of twenty people had to be attended due to superficial wounds of many kinds. Around thirty people were present at the time, while police forces had more than 70 officers present. Members of the camp also denounced that the police destroyed or confiscated materials that were part of the movement’s infrastructure such as tents, furniture and computers. The regional Government on the other hand, explained its actions alleging that it was necessary to “clean” the square, and that protesters did not allow the operation to be carried out. The Government delegate in the Canary Islands, Dominica Fernandez even went as far as to state that “there has not been any moment of violence. The cleaning operation was carried out and 45 minutes were given for the campers to pick up their belongings.”

Illustrative video here(La Palma). By Evaevisima.

In Palma de Mallorca the situation was very similar, with protestors sitting on the ground with hands raised in signs of peaceful resistance, while police insisted on dispersing the assemblies being carried out. Two people were arrested and 28 others were wounded, among them three police officers. According to a press release by the camp's official web page police actions “had a pacific response on behalf of the people present at the square, including the ones attacked. Most of them sat on the floor and raised their hands. Then the police tried to disperse the collective charging against them again, aggressively telling them to leave”. This situation went on for a while and when “police officers were told to identify themselves, these responded with an aggressive stance, pointing the rubber bullet shotguns at the protesters.” When the wounded people went to the hospital to receive an official medical statement of their situation, the police forced them to identify themselves, pressuring them on their decision to press charges, according to the same web.