Police in Catalonia arrested 128 people after Saturday night, when groups of young people looted shops and set rubbish bins alight in central Barcelona. Fourteen officers of the Mossos d'Esquadra were injured, four of them seriously.
The figure came from the Mossos' chief commissioner, Sílvia Cata, in an interview with Catalunya Ràdio, and was published on Sunday by The Olive Press, which reports that dozens of those arrested are minors. In the first overnight count, Euronews put the number at about 100 arrests, a quarter of them minors, according to the authorities.
How the night began
The gathering was called on social media under the name "Instituts Indignats", an explicit attempt to bring the French student movement "Lycéens Indignés" to Barcelona. The Mossos d'Esquadra say the protest was not authorised because no advance notice was given.
The first scuffles began at around 6pm on Saturday, in the streets around Plaça de Catalunya. At its peak about 600 people were there, according to Spanish media cited by Euronews. Groups dressed in black with their faces covered started by smashing street furniture; when riot police moved in, the clashes spread into the adjoining streets. Stones and other heavy objects were thrown at officers, and barricades were built out of skips, bins and motorbikes, some of which protesters tried to set on fire.
The damage
Fourteen shops were vandalised and looted — among them electronics, clothing, shoe and optician's stores — and there were at least 20 fires in the city centre, according to The Olive Press. The number of looted businesses was first reported by La Vanguardia. Motorbikes, bicycles and bus shelters were damaged, many businesses closed their doors, the Guàrdia Urbana restricted access to the square and train services at Plaça Catalunya station were halted for a time.
Protesters cited housing prices, the cost of living, education and a sense that governments are not responding to everyday problems, according to the newspaper Ara. The authorities were careful to separate the unrest from the housing-rights encampment that has been set up in Plaça de Catalunya for weeks.
What the authorities say
Barcelona's mayor, Jaume Collboni, condemned the incidents, announced that the city council will join the legal proceedings as a party and said the city "will not allow what happened to go unpunished". He told Euronews that "this will not be left as it is" and that the city would "go all the way", mentioning possible consequences for the parents and guardians of the minors involved.
"Violence has no place in Catalonia. Never," said the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, who defended the police response and noted that protesting is a democratic right but that violence cannot be justified. The Catalan interior minister, Núria Parlon, described what happened as "gratuitous violence and vandalism" by groups that were not defending any legitimate cause.
A weekend of protests across Europe
The unrest in Barcelona comes in the same weekend that cost-of-living protests spread across Europe. In France, Saturday's demonstrations ended with nearly a thousand arrests, and Italy deployed soldiers after protests turned violent in several cities, according to Euronews. In Tirana, Albania, there were also clashes with police.
With information from Euronews, The Olive Press and Ara.
