Spain's 'indignant' rally against Madrid eviction
MADRID — Spanish riot police Tuesday blocked more than 1,000 "indignant" protesters trying to gain access to a major Madrid square after having been evicted in a dawn raid.
Hundreds of protesters crammed into the sidestreets leading to the central square of Puerta del Sol, birthplace of a nationwide protest against the suffering caused by Spain's economic blight.
Lines of riot police crossed their arms and stood in front of the demonstrators, who gathered in swelling numbers in response to Facebook and Twitter pleas for a mass response to the earlier eviction.
Of course there was no riot until the riot police showed up.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jZ6-JmzPG7g3LMNosOrsqZPMI0dQ?docId=CNG.d86667b61f504f649364d2259023383c.201
Here's another great piece from Jerome Roos:
Just like in Athens, the move seems to be nothing less than a deliberate provocation. Earlier this week, the popular assembly had already decided to downsize the information center and close it during the night. The center had also become an artistic hub popular with tourists and madrileños alike. Our friend Oscar ten Houten (who runs the excellent Spanish Revolution blog) was there during the evictions this morning. He wrote the following:
The eviction of Puerta del Sol was a prime example of disrespect on the part of the authorities. They could have chosen to clean the square and to preserve the sculptures, the photos and the paintings that were exhibited there. But they didn’t. They treated everything as trash. We are a constructive movement based on peacefulness and respect. And today, in the face of the authorities’ indiscriminate vandalism, we have gained an enormous moral victory.
Photos and videos too.
http://roarmag.org/2011/08/spanish-police-evict-and-destroy-puerta-del-sol/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+roarmag+%28Reflections+on+a+Revolution%29
And here's a follow-up piece from Roos:
Eviction of Puerta del Sol backfires — big time!
But what happened tonight — in fact, what is on display right now, as I’m writing this — came unexpected even for myself. Given the unbearable heat of summer, most madrileños generally flee the city to the countryside in the month of august. This is probably why the police only made their decisive move now, instead of a few weeks ago. They expected less resistance than before.
But tonight, it looks like no one ever really left Madrid. Tens of thousands of people have completely blocked Madrid’s city center in a spontaneous outburst of indignation at the disrespectful removal of protesters from the movement’s ground-zero. At 20:00, thousands of indignados were crammed into all six access routes to Sol, with a genuine army of police (including at least 50 vans, according to El País) keeping them out.
When they realized they couldn’t take the square, the protesters quickly dissolved into a dozen side-streets and regrouped on a number of key locations: Cibeles, Atocha and Congreso, among them. For hours now, protesters have been blocking all the main traffic arteries in the city center. The mass protest is now reported to be headed back towards Sol for a second time, in another attempt to take back the square.
http://roarmag.org/2011/08/eviction-of-puerta-del-sol-backfires-big-time/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+roarmag+%28Reflections+on+a+Revolution%29
