15-M protesters regroup after Thursday's clashes with police

At press time on Friday, 15-M protesters were out in force on the streets of Madrid in response to a police charge against them at the Interior Ministry on Thursday night, which left 20 injured.

After blocking traffic on the Paseo de Prado avenue, more than 2,000 protesters were headed toward Sol at 8.30pm, where a strong police presence, including riot squads, awaited them. The tide of protesters was greater than in previous days, with members shouting slogans such as "No More Police Violence" in response to the previous night's charge, the first in Madrid since the popular protest movement began. The now symbolic square of Puerta del Sol had been reopened earlier Friday after three days of a police blockade.

Representatives from the movement denounced the police charge in a press conference on Friday, in which they accused Interior Minister Antonio Camacho of gross incompetence.

However, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, Socialist candidate for prime minister, said that "if there is violence, the police must act," adding: "Two-hundred people cannot be allowed to create havoc for an entire city."

Protesters agreed on Thursday night to pass through Sol every two hours on Friday, in addition to holding the 6pm protest "for the injured."

Simultaneous marches were planned for 8pm in other Spanish cities, including Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza, Santiago, Burgos and Tenerife.

Thursday's clashes

Three days of protestors circling the streets and squares round Puerta del Sol, three days of helicopters buzzing constantly over the center of Madrid, and three days of heavy police presence and cordoned-off zones of the capital. What had held as a peaceful truce between the 15-M movement and the authorities in Madrid is now clearly over.

On Thursday night, after repeated attempts to re-occupy Sol, protestors blocked the city's main north-south artery, the Paseo de la Castellana, to traffic as they protested in front of the Interior Ministry there. After several demonstrators climbed the iron gates in front of the building, at around 11pm, riot police charged, resulting in three arrests and 20 wounded, seven of whom were police officers.

It was the first police charge against the 15-M protestors since the movement was born back in May. It came at the end of yet another long day with a heavy police presence throughout the city, and amid dwindling numbers of protestors and rising temperatures and tensions in the capital. Of the 20 injured in the scuffle, four were taken to hospital.

Later, the protestors attempted to return once more to the now-famed cradle of the movement, the Puerta del Sol. Police presence has been heaviest in Sol throughout the last few days of unrest, and on Thursday night security forces there were intensified with dozens of riot police, complete with 20 vans. Unable to penetrate the police blockade, where all access points to the square were cordoned off and where the Metro station was temporarily closed for the third day in a row, some 500 protestors retreated to the nearby Jacinto Benavente square for the rest of the night.

In a radio interview just an hour before the police charge, the government delegate in Madrid, Dolores Carrión, finally broke the silence the authorities have maintained since protestors were evicted from their camp in Sol late on Tuesday night.

Justifying the police blockade in the central square, Carrión said it was necessary to ensure the camps were not re-established. She added that the government chose to act in early August in order "to cause the least amount of damage to citizens, the authorities, the protestors and local businesses."

In a press conference on Friday, representatives from the 15-M movement called for the resignation of both Carrión and Interior Minister Antonio Camacho.

Also on Friday, vice-secretary for communication of the Popular Party, Esteban González Pons, said that "serious errors" were being made in the police's handling of the protests, saying they "don't act when they should, and overreact when they shouldn't."