June 15th saw a demonstration in front of Barcelona’s regional Parliament as politicians took to their jobs which, apparently, turned violent. Events have been broadly used to discredit the #15M Spanish protest movement by politicians and media channels. Most aware of the movement have felt frustrated and outraged, adding to the general indignation, first because of the few actual protestors who didn’t act with the best intentions (some threw a tinted substance to politicians as they walked past) and second at the overt manipulation of events on the part of Catalan police and politicians/the media. Videos and emails have been doing the rounds all week.
Roarmag has published an article about it today, embedding the same video evidence that has been widely circulated in Spain:
During last week’s protests in Barcelona, the peaceful indignados discovered about a dozen police infiltrators in their midst. The undercover riot police, posing as anarchists, were suspected by protesters of instigating violence against police and Catalonian government officials.
You can observe the suspected infiltrated policemen from around the 1:30 minute, see them get spotted and challenged by genuine protestors. To make matters more evident, they get escorted out by uniformed police in the end.
For more information and evidence – Roarmag’s article.
Adding to the indignation, a popular Madrid television channel used violent images from protests in Greece and referred to them as evidence of the violence in Barcelona on June 15th last week. Also, Felip Puig, Catalan (regional) Interior Minister has threatened to sue Arcadi Oliveres, a well known local economist and activist, for making statements about the use of infiltrated police in order to provoke violence and discredit a peaceful movement. Felip Puig is the same politician responsible for instigating police violence in Barcelona’s Plaza Catalunya camp a few weeks ago and accusing the protestors of being violent despite wide circulation, even on mainstream media, of video evidence showing peaceful protestors sat on the ground with their hands up in the air suffering gratuitous police violence.
Police infiltrating protests to “show” how violent they are and that they must be disallowed is a trick that has been around at least since the G8 meeting in Genova, Italy just about exactly 10 years ago.
The Italian police learned the trick from the Americans. They were sent for training to the US just before that G8 meeting, and Genova turned into a massacre. The protesters did not know what hit them. They could not believe the police could be up to such dirty tricks. Now we see the same in Catalunia… At least they were recognized and isolated!
Just to be more accurate. It wasn’t a “popular Madrid television channel” who used images from Greece. It was the public television channel of Madrid (http://www.madrid.org), called “Telemadrid”.
This trick is as old as Rome is. And they use it all the time.
@Evenflow The fact it is a publicly funded channel is indeed relevant. Thanks for the comment.