Spain: applause for police crackdown on housing protesters sparks backlash

«Dadles hasta en el alma»: aplausos a la carga policial

The discussion kicks off with a post that ties together two things that rarely go together: the DANA flooding in Valencia and the protests over housing prices. "The trash who laugh at the beating the kids got in Valencia, I hope karma catches up with you soon," writes the person who opens the thread, adding: "social peace is going to end for everyone." From there, the conversation shifts to a specific issue: who applauds the police charging at protesters, and why.

What is celebrated and what is condemned

A post quoted in the thread, attributed to a commenter, sums up the most repeated stance: "The more they shout 'shame on you,' the prouder you should be to be a cop," adding that violence is "escalating across Spain," citing Madrid, Zaragoza and Valencia. The most upvoted reply goes the same way: someone says those images are "relaxing" to watch and that, if he had children, he would steer them into the National Police.

The counterpoint is not long in coming. Someone recalls that in Ceuta the police did not act the same way and asks why. Another post says that watching protesters and officers get beaten gives him "the same amusement," because he sees it as an exchange in which everyone loses. And a third, harsher line argues that "no matter how many beatings they get, it won't be enough," justifying the intervention on the grounds that, in his version of events, the crowd had stormed private property.

The root of the conflict: housing, squatting and the narrative

The core argument of those applauding is not the police, but housing. They claim the demonstrators are "the usual anti-Spanish far-left trash," who would have backed mass immigration, squatting and tax hikes, and who now complain about rents they themselves helped drive up through laws against small landlords and the failure to build housing.

The response from the other side comes as a historical attribution: "Mass immigration was brought in by the right — Aznar and the employers' association." The exchange ends without agreement and with a warning: "You are pathetic and it will backfire on you."

Who is behind the housing protests

The thread splits between those who see the gatherings as a citizen movement crushed by prices and those who read it as a political operation. The second group claims that "nobody would have touched them if they hadn't stormed private property to assault other people" and that the police have "orders to go easy on them." In the first camp, the criticism targets the institution itself: the Spanish police are described as "a full-blown Bolivarian revolutionary guard."

The conversation closes, however, with a diagnosis more uncomfortable for everyone: that both sides act as "tools of the oligarchy and the powers that be." That is the exact point where the analysis stalls: no one argues anymore about who is right on the street, but about who wins when the street becomes the stage.