Today, May 27th 2011, there was a demonstration at Plaza Catalunya, Barcelona. This is a result of many young people in Spain feeling “robbed of a future” with the unemployment rate being as high as 40% for the young. The politicians failing to deal with the economical crisis the country is experiencing, many take to the streets to show their frustrations.
The local police decide to communicate with batons, in classic Spanish style “policing”. Somehow authorities here cannot distinguish a “stick” from a “carrot” thus employing the “stick only” strategy to….basically everything. Fortunately the police decided the provocative rather than pro-active strategy of theirs was not having a very positive effect and withdrew to other more distant positions.
It's a bad memory, Catalonia always led the democratic sentiment and was a model of freedom until that day.