[News] They burn a van of the Urban Guard of Barcelona with two agents inside

[SougarLord]

 

The streets of the center of Barcelona were, once again, last night, the scene of a day of extreme vandalism and violence, starring radicals who even attacked and burned a Urban Guard van, with two local Police officers inside, they had to get out of the official vehicle quickly to avoid personal injury.

 

Convened by the self-appointed Committees for the Defense of the Republic (CDR) and Arran, the youths of the CUP, a party with which ERC is negotiating the formation of the new Catalan Government and parliamentary stability in the new regional legislature after the elections of 14 In February, around half a thousand people gathered in the Plaza Universidad around 7:00 p.m., mostly from various parts of the city, from where they had left in the form of 'columns' and with slogans calling for the end of the democratic regime that had begun. in 1978.

 

The excuse was the imprisonment of rapper Pablo Hasel, convicted of exalting terrorism and insults to the Crown, turned into a champion of an alleged defense of freedom of expression. After 7 pm, the protesters began an erratic tour through the streets of the center of Barcelona with chants such as "Pim, pam, pum, no quedi no un" ("pim, pam, pum, no one left", in a clear reference to Police officers).

Attack on the police station

Upon reaching La Rambla, the protesters blew up several bank ATMs and reached the Guàrdia Urbana police station, which was also attacked a few days ago by radicals protesting Hasel's imprisonment. It was at that moment, last night, that the most violent and dangerous images were produced. The radicals, almost all hooded, threw all kinds of objects at the police officers who were guarding the police station and the parked vehicles, both the Local Police and the Mossos.

 

After attacking several Urban Guard vans, which they defaced, threw Molotov cocktails and sprayed them with flammable liquid (a material that they have used on other nights to burn garbage containers and motorcycles). Until one of the launches ignited one of the Guàrdia Urbana vans, in which there were two agents. The driver of the vehicle had to exit through the passenger door.

 

The radicals celebrated the flames in the police van, which they accompanied with all kinds of insults towards the agents ("son of a b ... Go, run away, you bastard"). It was only seconds but the worst was feared. Then the sirens of the vans of the Mossos d'Esquadra Brimo (riot control unit that the CUP wants to suppress and that ERC and Junts have been favorable to its modification) that arrived at the police station sounded. They took positions, put out the fire and the protesters continued their march, destroying the street furniture that they found in their path.

 

It was devastating, for example, how they left the Rambla de Catalunya in their wake, after the attack on the police station in the Raval neighborhood. It looked like a pitched battle had occurred, but nothing like that. The Mossos only acted after the attack on the police station and, once dispersed into groups, the arrests began. At the close of this edition, the Autonomous Police reported that there had been ten arrests (for attacks against agents and public disorders). One of the detainees, they pointed out, could be involved in the burning of the Guàrdia Urbana van.

 

The landscape was bleak. Vandalized ATMs, looting, vandalism, street furniture that will have to be repaired ... and an attack on a hotel that they also tried to set on fire. Workers of the establishment (of the NH chain) avoided greater evils, but the window and part of the furniture in the 'hall' were smashed. Everything happened very fast. Before the 10 pm curfew, there were no protesters and there were no further incidents.

 

The balances of Aragonès

 

Unlike what happened in the nights before this Saturday (it goes for a dozen violent days after Hasel's imprisonment), in which Pere Aragonès (ERC), acting president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, shone for his absence, not a single message, it was pronounced last night. He did it, like the rest of the political leaders, through Twitter.

 

Aragonès maintained the equidistance of what he knows that the protesters were from "his own" and after defending freedom he criticized "acts of vandalism" and "violence." "The looting or destruction of shops, the burning of furniture or the attack on public workers are neither freedom of expression nor of demonstration," he said.

 

Salvador Illa (PSC) was shown without hesitation, who sent all his support to the Mossos and the Urban Guard, and to the rest of the local police (there were also incidents in Sabadell). "Our unqualified condemnation of acts of vandalism and gratuitous and unjustified violence," said the leader of the PSC. In the same way, Ada Colau, Carlos Carrizosa (Cs), Óscar Ramírez (PP) and Manuel Valls, among others, regretted what happened.