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Massive demo in Barcelona![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() First short report, live from the demo! A first short live report from Barcelona! We just spoke to one of the participants in the demo which is taking place now. Massive anti-capitalist demo in Barcelona! At this very moment (16 March, 19h30), there's thousands of people demonstrating in Barcelona against the EU-summit. At the EU-summit the main discussion was on the privatisation of the public services, including the electricity supply. Those public services should work for profit instead of offering services for everyone. We just spoke to Bart Vandersteene from International Socialist Resistance (ISR) who is at the demonstration. He said that the demo is huge, probably bigger than the union demo of last thursday! According to his first impressions there's more than 100.000 people, amongst which a lot of local people from Barcelona. This shows the enormous potential of the opposition movement against the rightwing policies and against capitalism. There's very few political delegations and people don't shout much slogans. Most people don't demonstrate in organised contingents, it's all very spontanuous. The few political groups intervening keep themselves limited to interventions from the sidelines without really giving a way forward for the movement. A lot of small groups of unorganised youth and workers are making up their own contingents. From this potential a lot could be done against the rightwing government of Aznar, but we'll need a political instrument for that. An organised movement would be much stronger to take up the task of building such a political instrument. The police is present in big numbers: 8.500 policemen. For the moment everything remains quiet. But after the problems which occured yesterday is the police presence causing tension amongst those present. The demonstrators are not going into the provocative presence of the police and keep a very good mood in the demo. |
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Jump To Comment: 2 1I'd hate to see what happened in Barcelona on March 17th?
Did the cops baton charge the St. Patrick's Day parade as well?
If only they were half as hard on murderers and heroin dealers.
300.000 at Barcelona demo!
Official police figures speak about 250.000 people at the Barcelona demo! According to our comrades in Barcelona it is even more, at least 300.000! This makes the Barcelona demo as big as the Genova demo last summer. About 100.000 people are at present walking to see a concert of Manu Chao.
The demo was peaceful, but at the end there were problems with the police. The police was already nervous for quite some time and at the end of the demo they attacked the backside where there were many anarchists. According to what we heard the police used rubber bullets.