PP forced to pull online game where players shoot immigrants

Rescate (or, Rescue) is a simple kind of interactive internet game in which you accumulate points by destroying characters and icons. The difference is its heroine is the Popular Party (PP) candidate for the premiership of the Catalan regional government, Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, and among the characters and icons she destroys are "illegal" immigrants who parachute from aircraft and Catalan pro-independence supporters.

Renamed Alicia Croft for the game - in reference to Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider series - Sánchez-Camacho, traveling on the back of a seagull called Pep, goes around shooting everything that moves, which also includes images from Catalan and Spanish culture, such as sausages, paellas and bullfighters' caps, in order to take Catalonia out of the crisis. The more you shoot, the more points you get.

When the PP press office announced the launch of the internet game - and a version for cellphones - early on Tuesday afternoon its webpage collapsed due to the thousands of people trying to register. Later that day, around 10pm, the party took the game down from the internet, explaining in a press release that the company that developed the game had not followed its instructions. A sign reading "illegal immigrants" should have read "illegal mafias," it said. The PP made clear it regretted the error.

By Tuesday night it was impossible to access the game, with the page offering the message: "Even though it sounds like a lie, this error was not caused by [current] regional leader Montilla."

Players of the game can also destroy an airship featuring the Catalan pro-independence flag, a line of unemployed people, a closed mouth representing the "lack" of linguistic freedom in Catalonia, and the bull and Catalan donkey icons from the popular bumper stickers.

Lightbulbs representing the PP's "ideas" to get out the economic crisis are also launched from the lower part of the screen.