Spain,Report on Repression in Barcelona Friday, 15th March 2002 At 13.00 o'clock there was a demonstration planned the Liceo metro stop in Barcelona. Its slogan was "Capitalism can't be reformed, it must be destroyed. The rich also cry". The first thing the police did was identify demonstrators gathering at the start-point. Without the demonstration even having started, police attacked demonstrators and arrested someone (at least twenty photographers captured this moment). It's important no know that all demonstrators have done has been to shout. Never has there been any attack against police on their part. It's obvious that police's aim was not to control the demonstration but to directly avoid there being any demonstration at all. After this first charge there have been a few others, but not very strong. What police managed was to divide demonstrators, although they managed to get together again. For quite a while there have been several small charges, probably more to frighten people than to actually arrest anybody. However, every time demonstrators got back together. It's important to understand we're not talking about a battle between police and demonstrators. Rather than that, we're talking about demonstrators standing in front of police and drawing back when charges took place and then going back when police went back to where they had been. At one point, police got in their vans and apparently left. Demonstrators said good-bye shouting insulting and spitting at them. However, one or two vans stayed in front of the Liceo. Suddenly, the police in those vans attacked and that made demonstrators run up Las Ramblas a bit. But when they went up, they found that the vans that had left had parked all along Las Ramblas up to Plaza Cataluqa. So while demonstrators ran up because police was charging from below, more police was coming from the side. Some people went into side streets, where some ball shots were heard (in Spain police often uses guns that shoot something kind of like hard tennis balls to get rid of crowds). At the Plaza Cataluqa there were hardly any demonstrators left. What happened on the side streets we don't know. Many demonstrators had their own cameras and video-cameras. There were also many official journalists. Police didn't doubt to attack both. Once again, we see the real side of the EU that is being built. And we are not going to shut up. Police murderers.
