Police and protesters
clashed today in the bustling heart of Barcelona, well away from a heavily-guarded suburban convention center where EU leaders discussed market-minded economic reforms. Critics of globalization's impact on workers' rights, politics and the environment staged a dozen or so "decentralized actions" throughout the day in the sun-soaked Catalan capital, warming up for a major demonstration tomorrow.
Police charged about 100 demonstrators on La Rambla, the elegant boulevard that runs up from Barcelona harbor, in a brief mid-afternoon confrontation that prompted many shopkeepers to slam down their shutters.About a dozen people were seen by an
AFP
reporter being taken into custody, as curious foreign tourists watched from a distance.Scuffles also broke out at the landmark Sagrada Familia church, scene of a protest denouncing corporate lobbying in Brussels. One man was seen with slight injuries to the head.La Rambla is more than five kilometers from the summit venue - a convention center ringed by chain-link fence and a security cordon guarded by police with attack dogs and armored vehicles.Around 8,500 police - many from other parts of Spain - are in Barcelona for the summit, as Spanish authorities prepared for anything from street battles with young anarchists to a bomb attack by the Basque separatist group ETA.Steps were also taken to prevent a repeat of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, with F-18 fighter jets and a NATO radar plane in the sky and Hawk anti-aircraft missiles at Barcelona airport.The quarterly European Council meetings have become a magnet for protesters, with the December 2000 summit in Nice, France and the June 2001 gathering in Gothenburg, Sweden particularly hard-hit by riots.Barcelona, Spain's biggest Mediterreanean city, was shaken by violent protests last June when it hosted a World Bank meeting, with shop windows smashed in the smart Paseo de Gracia district.But a series of demonstrations timed to coincide with the summit - starting last weekend with a Take Back the Streets event - have gone off largely without incident.Items on the protest menu today included bicycle demonstrations, the painting of a mural supporting Zapatista rebels in Mexico, and a symbolic "burial" of the euro.In the city's Genoa square, a memorial was held for Carlo Giuliani, who became the first fatality of the anti-globalization movement when he was shot by police at the Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy last July.Many activists consider the 15-nation European Union as a Trojan horse for big corporate interests. They are particularly skeptical about the liberal economic reforms that are the focus of the Barcelona summit.Coordinating the protests in Barcelona is a coalition of about 150 groups called the Campaign Against the Europe of Capital and the War, which is led by the Spanish branch of the protest group ATTAC.
AFP