Anti-migrant rioters attack homes of ‘foreigners' in Spanish town
Police reinforcements have been deployed to Torre-Pacheco, in the Murcia region, where five people have been injured and nine detained in the disturbances, officials said on Monday.
Far-right groups and residents have fought against youths of north African origin several times since a 68-year-old Spaniard was attacked on Wednesday.
Public anger mounted after a photograph of his badly bruised face and a video purporting to show the attack were posted online.
The man, Domingo Tomás, told Spanish media that the incident occurred as he took his usual early morning walk at 5.30am. He came across two young people of Maghrebi origin, he said, when a third ran at him and hit him with a stick, knocking him down before beating him again.
'I didn't understand what they were saying as it was in another language. I didn't say anything to provoke them,' he told El Español news website. 'I had my watch and house keys with me, and that young man didn't even take the watch — he just hit me to hurt me. He hit me for fun.
'In town, they say the young kids are doing a dare, hitting someone to see who hits harder, and I think that's why they did it — to film everything.'
Two of the three suspects have been arrested, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, the interior minister, said on Monday. Police were still looking for the main perpetrator.
Six others — five Spaniards and one north African resident — were arrested for assault, public disorder, hate crimes or damage to property, the interior ministry said on Monday morning. Later in the day, a ninth person was detained in connection with an attack on a kebab shop.
The local mayor, Pedro Ángel Roca, called on the 'migrant community not to leave their homes and not to confront rioters', telling the national broadcaster, TVE: 'Confrontation achieves nothing and ultimately makes us all afraid.'
Tomás said that the video purporting to show the attack was not of him, prompting media to report that it had been circulated by far-right groups hoping to whip up anger. One group, named 'Deport Them Now', posted a message on social media calling for attacks against people of north African origin.
• Police should disclose ethnicity of suspects, says Met chief
On Friday, the city council had called a peaceful demonstration to condemn the attack, but tensions were already running high. A handful of youths of Maghrebi origin arrived, as did members of far-right groups who attacked them despite the presence of police officers.
Videos posted on social media showed men dressed in clothes bearing far-right symbols and migrants carrying Moroccan flags hurling objects at each other in Saturday night's violence, which came after lower intensity unrest. Several dozen youths from far-right groups, some hooded, hurled glass bottles and objects at riot police in Torre-Pacheco on Sunday night. Police fired rubber bullets to quell the unrest.
Groups of violent individuals, many of them from outside the municipality, roamed the town's streets armed with sticks and went to homes where they knew foreigners lived, according to the local newspaper La Opinión de Murcia. Police intercepted more than 20 vehicles attempting to enter the town, with some occupants carrying sticks and batons, Grande-Marlaska said.
The Murcian town has 40,000 inhabitants, 30 per cent of whom are of Maghrebi origin. The area surrounding the town also hosts large numbers of migrants who work as day labourers in agriculture, one of the pillars of the regional economy.
Politicians have appealed for calm. Grande-Marlaska blamed far-right groups and the populist right-wing Vox party. 'It's a consequence of the far-right's rhetoric, endorsed by the right, which doesn't question it. It's Vox's fault and its rhetoric,' he said. He criticised the political party's association of illegal immigration with crime when interior ministry data 'doesn't support it'.
The Vox leader, Santiago Abascal, denied any responsibility for the incidents and said the government's migration policies were to blame.
Abdelali, a north African resident who declined to give his surname, said he was now afraid of being attacked on the streets. He said: 'We want peace. That's what we want, we don't want anything else. I ride my scooter and I'm afraid of being hit by a bottle.'
In 2000, violent anti-immigration protests broke out in the town of El Ejido in southern Spain after three Spanish citizens were killed by Moroccan migrants.
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