New evidence: undercover police triggered Barcelona revolution

Jérôme E. Roos on June 21, 2011

Shocking new evidence has emerged showing agents provocateurs instigating last week’s anti-police violence in Barcelona.Facing a youth uprising of unprecedented proportions, it appears that Spanish politicians and police are resorting to the same dirty tactics that earned Hosni Mubarak the scorn of the Western world: planting undercover police officers inside the peaceful protest movement to provoke violence and discredit the movement.

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.

Right after the riots, a YouTube video emerged showing peaceful protesters confronting the agents provocateurs before riot police moved in to secure their men, separating them from the indignados. Now, even more shocking evidence has emerged showing one of the agents provocateurs throwing an object at a police van.

The video below shows riot police evacuating their undercover men after protesters discover their presence in their midst (around 3m40s):

The image below shows the police infiltrators. On the left, they are preparing for duty alongside their riot police colleagues, on the right they are posing as anarchists among the protesters. Pay specific attention to the guy with the shaved head wearing a sleeveless black shirt, grey or brown shoes and shorts (framed in yellow):

Now take a look at the moving images below, obtained from a Spanish TV broadcast of the riots, which shows the same guy with the shaved head, sleeveless shirt and shorts (along with possibly another, similarly-looking police infiltrator) throwing an object at a police van before losing his balance and falling over:

The same protester can also clearly be seen in the YouTube above (@3m15s).

After last week’s riots, the Catalan Minister of the Interior, Felipe Puig — who had previously ordered (and subsequently justified) the brutal attack on peaceful protesters at Plaça de Catalunya — immediately sought to discredit the 15-M movement, saying that the “peaceful resistance” of the indignados is “just a cover for violent protesters.”

Puig subsequently used the riots in Barcelona as an excuse to call on the Spanish people to drop their public sympathy for the peaceful protest movement. These tactics are nothing short of the treacherous deception and divisive manipulation normally associated with the besieged authoritarian regimes of the Arab world.

Luckily, the peaceful indignados of Barcelona had the opportunity to prove their peaceful intentions. Last Sunday, they took to the streets in drones, chanting slogans like “no to violence” and “more hugs less blows”. And as El País rightly observed, ”it seems that the people have perfectly understood that the violent incidents at the Catalan Parliament in recent days have nothing to do with the 15-M movement at all.”

What is clear now, however, is that the fight has become ugly. As Antonio Gramsci so famously wrote, “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” We cannot allow them to derail our movement. Only light can drive out darkness. Only love can drive out hatred. And our commitment to non-violence will not be broken by the subversive strategies of those in power.

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