Spain opens probe into police attack on unarmed Black men

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - Spain’s Interior Ministry announced on Monday that it will investigate a violent police attack on reportedly unarmed Black men in Madrid.

The police violence in the multicultural neighborhood of Lavapies was caught on film and denounced by left-wing politicians and anti-racist groups in Spain.

The video begins with the image of a man completely immobilized by one police officer on the street. A second officer is then shown whacking the immobilized man with a baton.

From there, a second Black man standing nearby seems to ask the police officer to calm down and stop hitting the man who is already pinned to the ground.

That officer then attacks the second Black man, forcefully pushing him, punching him in the throat and trying to put him in a chokehold. That man manages to escape the officer’s grasp and runs off the camera, chased by the police.

After, the video shows the first Black man continue to be pinned to the ground by the police officer, who at times seems to be putting him in a chokehold.

The entire video lasts just 70 seconds. In the end, two migrant men were arrested.

But the video soon went viral on social media and was denounced as inappropriate police behavior.

Despite the investigation, Ione Belarra, the head of the left-wing Podemos party, said Spain’s Interior Minister should resign because “in all these years, he hasn’t lifted a finger to put an end to police brutality with racist overtones, which is what we saw last week in Lavapies.”

On Sunday, around 350 activists and residents took to the streets calling for an end to police violence and denouncing “institutional racism” and “police harassment” against Black migrants in Lavapies.

Podemos politician Serigne Mbaye told Spanish daily El Pais that the men in the video will denounce the incident and ask for the full footage of the events, as captured by CCTV cameras on the streets.

Mbaye added that they were both involved in handing out food to young men in the neighborhood and insisted that they experienced the violence while they were minding their own business.

“This case will not go unpunished… thanks to a neighbor who was able to record this, the police brutality so common in this neighborhood is finally seen,” Mbaye said on a social media video.

Meanwhile, Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, the conservative mayor of Madrid, told local journalists that he trusted the police.

“Unless there is evidence to the contrary, I have total confidence in the security forces. And, therefore, we’ll have to see that report. Then, we’d have to decide, if necessary, any consequences that may arise," he said.