The Mossos d'Esquadra and the Guàrdia Urbana carried out 2,264 identifications in Barcelona during the operation on October 24. The new pepper spray protocol arrives a week before the general strike.
The Minister of Interior, Núria Parlon, reported 2,264 identifications made in Barcelona during the mobilisations on October 24: 1,800 by the Mossos d'Esquadra and 646 by the Guàrdia Urbana. According to the same source, the police arrested a dozen people who were not related to the events.
Parlon explained that the controls focused on minors with the aesthetic associated with the Blocus movement, dressed in black or dark clothing and wearing hoods, and denied that a racial profiling criterion was applied. However, human rights organisations and anti-racist entities report that discriminatory identifications are common on the streets, something that the LO 4/2015 on the protection of citizen security expressly prohibits in its article 16.
The operation was at level 4, the highest level planned for public mobilisations, with more than 500 agents. For the first time in five years, a reception point for detainees was set up on Pau Claris street. The Mossos issued 181 reports for carrying items considered knives or potentially harmful, including sprays and Halloween costume masks.
The Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, celebrated the outcome of the operation and warned that in the face of new calls, the response will be necessary. Across the State, the investigation resulted in ten arrests linked to the calls, three of them in Catalunya.
Lawyers who assisted the detainees warn of a risk of excessive criminalisation. Lawyer Anahí Zárate was on duty in the public defender's office when she received 35 minors detained for the disturbances on October 24 in a single day: "We were three lawyers for all the boys."
"The principle of proportionality that should guide all police intervention goes out the window," according to Xavier Monge from the Alerta Solidària collective.
The judicial cases total 130 detainees for the events of October. Four adult men remain in preventive detention, two in Barcelona and two in València, as alleged instigators through social media. Some young people are also prohibited from attending new demonstrations.
The Mossos d'Esquadra published a new protocol for the use of pepper spray on Wednesday, November 4, which replaces the instruction from 2013. The text authorises OC spray at demonstrations and gatherings to restore public order, always with prior verbal or loudspeaker warning and when circumstances justify it.
For the residents of Barcelona, the protocol and the operation on November 11 will mark the mobility and police presence in the centre during the general strike, where the police will again deploy a high-level operation.
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