More than 50 arrested, 13 injured by pepper spray and an Andalusian politician with a broken rib, the first balance of the strike

Alterations on the Gran Vía in Madrid, more than 30 circulation arteries cut in Catalonia, several dozen detainees from 'information' pickets throughout Spain, a politician from Adelante Andalucía with a broken rib, 13 injured in Mercamadrid... These are some of the images left this Wednesday by the general strike for housing called by the Tenants' Union and later supported by the majority centrals, UGT and CCOO.

Madrid's Gran Vía is one of the areas most affected by altercations in the capital. Hundreds of protesters have blocked traffic on several occasions and the National Police have had to intervene repeatedly to reopen the road, resulting in police charges and moments of tension between agents of the Police Intervention Unit (UIP) and the strikers.

The agencies counted "more than 50" detainees at five in the afternoon, with three quarters of the 24-hour strike already consumed. According to Interior, those detainees were distributed as follows: 15 in Madrid, four in Málaga and Almería, three in Granada, two in Zamora, four in Valencia and one in Navarra, Valladolid, La Rioja, Alicante, Castellón and A Coruña.

In addition, the Ertzaintza has arrested 13 people (8 men and 5 women) in Vitoria, San Sebastián, Zamudio, Portugalete and Agurain in different incidents.

According to the Interior, the National Police and the Civil Guard have reported 919 incidents related to the strike day from ten o'clock this Tuesday night until 5 p.m.:

Mercamadrid was one of the first areas of confrontation between protesters and police officers who were trying to preserve the right of those who did not want to strike. There, according to information provided by the unions, 13 people were injured when they were sprayed with pepper spray during the altercations, exactly at the entrances to the large venue, which caused several of the participants to require medical assistance.

In Madrid, dozens of cuts were recorded due to the force of traffic. On the M-30 in Legazpi, south of the capital, the Tenants' Union itself managed to cut the ring road at its exit from the tunnels under Madrid Río. There were more or less serious outages also on A-42 in the direction of Madrid and in the direction of Toledo, and also on the A-3.

But it was in Catalonia where the cuts were much more widespread, and they managed to stop dozens of roads at the same time, causing colossal delays.

There the pickets managed to stop the AP-7, the great Mediterranean highway, with cuts at various points along its route; the A-2, one of the main accesses to Barcelona from the interior; and the B-10 or Ronda del Litoral de Barcelona. In addition, there were picket actions in Mercabarna, where protests and burning of tires were reported, and in the center of Barcelona, ​​pickets visited commercial areas such as Portal de l'Àngel and Passeig de Gràcia, achieving the closure of numerous establishments.

Furthermore, in Granada, medical services certified chest trauma and a rib fracture to Adelante Andalucía's organizational secretary, Néstor Salvador, after a police intervention at a picket in the Metro.

In Catalonia, until this afternoon, no serious incidents have been recorded, although there have been significant blockades on dozens of communication routes, such as the AP-7 or the A-2, and accesses to industrial estates or logistics centers.

Early in the morning, all entrances to Barcelona's Sants station were closed to traffic in an action organized by the strike committees of the Sants and Les Corts neighborhoods. Inside, travelers have been able to access the lobby through the accesses connected to the metro network.

During this day of strike, the Mossos d'Esquadra carry out a maximum deployment with up to 9,000 agents on the streets divided into several shifts.

Barcelona is the central focus of the protests and, this afternoon, several columns of protesters have converged in the city center - on Gran Via, between Universitat, Passeig de Gràcia and Plaza de Catalunya - with the presence of the main unions and groups in defense of housing. During the demonstration, several small groups of hooded men have vandalized some businesses (such as Zara, the Apple store or fast food outlets) by painting the windows, banging on the blinds and tearing down some posters.

In the Inditex group store in Plaza de Catalunya they have had to enable the next door so that customers could leave. It was then that several Mossos operatives were deployed to disperse the group and carry out several identifications on one side of the square.

At the moment, there is a detainee in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona for an alleged crime of damage for burning containers last night.

On the other hand, six police officers have been treated for minor injuries following a police intervention on the B-23 highway in Molins de Rei (Barcelona). In addition, the Catalan police force has opened an investigation into an incident between a vehicle and a picket during the strike protests in Reus (Tarragona). The events occurred around eight o'clock on T-11, when a person driving a vehicle wanted to overcome a picket line: the vehicle's rearview mirror collided with one of the protesters, resulting in a minor injury.

The two most media incidents of the morning have featured the RTVE Catalunya program Cafè d'idees, on the one hand, and the president of Aliança Catalana, Sílvia Orriols, on the other.

Around 7:45 a.m., about 50 hooded protesters accessed the facilities of the public audiovisual entity on Roc Boronat Street in Barcelona and displayed banners in front of the cameras, which prevented the program presented by Gemma Nierga from starting at eight. After several Mossos d'Esquadra crews went to the building, the protesters left the studio and Cafè d'idees began broadcasting at around 8:45 a.m.

The Catalan journalist has denounced on social networks that the protesters violated the right to information and recalled that the program had a special edition on the strike day prepared by minimum services personnel.

In Ripoll (Girona) there have been moments of tension between Orriols, mayor of this municipality of almost 11,000 inhabitants, and members of a picket of the general strike. The leader of Aliança has tried to take images of the people who were participating in this union action and some of them have tried to cut her off and push her away. Orriols has tried to get behind a banner that read "Education is the future" with the intention of recording the faces of the people who were holding it and, as a result of the struggle, the member of Parliament who is also a member of Parliament has suffered an injury to her left hand and has published a photograph on social networks.

A few hours before, Orriols had approached another picket that was blocking the circulation of a road in Ripoll to record with his mobile the twenty people who were participating in the blockade, since, as he explained, he wanted to "identify" them in order to sanction them.

The leader of Aliança has assured that she has called "five times" the regional mayor of the Mossos d'Esquadra to help the Local Police "guarantee free movement." According to Orriols, "the political orders that the Mossos commanders have received to promote the strike", from the Department of the Interior led by Minister Núria Parlon, "violate the fundamental rights of citizens."

The Basque Police had to multiply in the early hours of the strike day in the face of traffic cuts with banners and barricades used by "informational" pickets in Euskadi. 13 people - several of them with police records for public disorder - were arrested, proceedings have been opened against three other individuals and 150 people were identified for participating in the mobilizations. The Basque agents suffered objects being thrown in different interventions, which caused 7 ertzainas to have to be treated by medical services. The most violent incidents occurred in Portugalete (Vizcaya) where four men and four women were arrested. One of them had already been investigated on three previous occasions for similar events.

The incidents on 11N in Euskadi were concentrated at the start of the strike day with roadblocks in the industrial estates and at the accesses to the three Basque capitals. In fact, the first police intervention occurred at 5:30 in the morning when a group of individuals had piled up tires in Salvatierra (Álava) to block a road with an incendiary barricade. Some protesters, as happened in Zamudio (Vizcaya), clashed with the Police. A 52-year-old man was arrested in the town of Biscay after hitting an Ertzaina who needed to be transferred to a health center. Also for trying to hit a Basque police officer, a 32-year-old woman was arrested in San Sebastián who had two previous arrests for attacking law enforcement officers.

The protesters attacked furniture in a bar in the Plaza de la Virgen Blanca in Vitoria and threw flares in several businesses in Bilbao. Furthermore, throughout the morning they managed to get dozens of hotel establishments in the three Basque capitals to close their doors for fear of suffering damage.

In addition to the graffiti on banks and real estate agencies, groups of protesters sabotaged with paint the electoral headquarters of the PP in Vitoria, which presided over a photograph of the popular president Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

The clashes with the pickets ended around 12 noon when the massive demonstrations began in the three Basque capitals. According to sources from the Bilbao Municipal Police, the march called by Basque unions and the Socialist Housing Union brought together 50,000 people. Thousands of people have also attended the marches held in San Sebastián and Vitoria with different calls from the UGT and CCOO, on the one hand, and the 'abertzales' unions and the Socialist Housing Union, on the other.