The riot police who charged at the Complutense denounce the lack of "clear guidelines" on the part of the Government Delegation: "They leave us at the feet of the horses"

The morning of protests in defense of public education at the Complutense University of Madrid has ended with a police charge that has once again placed the riot police at the center of the debate. The agents who participated in the device defend that their actions responded to the attitude of the protesters, whom they accuse of repeatedly disobeying their instructions and resorting to violence when they tried to contain the concentration.

His story, reported to this newspaper by several of the agents deployed on the campus, focuses on the fact that the device was developed in a context of growing tension. The members of the Police Intervention Unit (UIP) - the technical name for the riot police - maintain that the participants in the concentration intended to block an avenue and that they were warned "several times" that they should clear the space and follow police instructions. This request, they indicate, was repeated "up to three times" before an intervention was considered to contain the group and prevent the situation from escalating.

"They started kicking us under the banner and they didn't pay attention to the instructions," summarizes one of the agents. This behavior, they point out, was decisive in interpreting that the concentration had entered into a dynamic of confrontation and in deciding an action aimed at controlling the group's movements. The initial intention, as they explain, was to encapsulate the protesters, a police intervention technique that consists of delimiting and containing a group to limit their movements and regain control of a tense situation.

The agents defend that this maneuver was intended to prevent the incidents from spreading and that their action was not an arbitrary response against those who were protesting, but rather a reaction to what they describe as a "hostile" attitude. The sequence of events, the individual conduct of the participants and the circumstances in which force was used have been one of the main topics of the day in all the media. So much so, that the Government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, has requested an urgent investigation into what happened to clarify the circumstances of the police action and determine if any excess occurred.

The opening of these proceedings is especially relevant given the existence of conflicting versions about the origin of the incidents: while the riot police maintain that they intervened after repeated unattended requests and being kicked, representatives of the participating groups have questioned whether there were sufficient reasons to charge.

The discomfort in the UIP with the institutions is manifest. They focus their anger, above all, on the Government Delegation, which they reproach, according to their version, for the lack of clear guidelines to deal with this type of situation. They consider that they are forced to resolve increasingly complex scenarios on the spot without always having sufficiently defined criteria on how to proceed, which, in their opinion, leaves them exposed to subsequent criticism, regardless of the decisions they make during the operation.

"They leave us at the feet of our horses," they lament, in reference to what they consider a lack of support and precise instructions from their political leaders. The requested investigation must make it possible to reconstruct the sequence of events and establish whether the previous warnings, the decision to encapsulate the group and the subsequent use of force met the criteria required for police intervention.