The virulence and dispersion of the sabotage overflows to Interior
The Government has witnessed in recent hours how a violent protest by carriers puts the industry and, by extension, the national economy in check, without the hasty and voluminous sum of police officers serving to placate it. The Ministry of the Interior reported this Friday at noon of 6 detainees in five days of protest on the roads and logistics centers, a figure that seems minuscule due to the virulence of the filmed sabotage and also if compared to the police response to any disturbance of those that have occurred at other times in urban centers. In a few hours, and with the protests already monopolizing all the headlines, the number of detainees doubled, reaching a total of 12.
Interior has made an effort in recent hours to report the increase in troops for the device, including the distribution of images of the police convoys that escorted the transfer of essential products. However, the volume of trucks that must circulate on the highways on a daily basis to guarantee basic supplies, added to the geographical extent where police deployment is necessary, makes an effective response impossible, police sources confess.
It occurs despite the fact that the mobilized troops totaled 23,600 police and civil guards this Friday, according to the figure provided by the Interior, to which must be added the agents of the Basque and Catalan regional police and the Foral de Navarra. To compare, serve the deployments on the occasion of large demonstrations or sporting or musical events in Madrid, where there are never more than 2,000 deployed agents.
The Government has launched to identify the authors with the extreme right, an affirmation that could be sustained when verifying the declarations of the platform, minority, which calls the strike. Sources from the Information Services consulted by elDiario.es assure that the mobilization capacity of such a minority organization in the present context was not correctly assessed. The protest, they add, has been gaining supporters due to the coincidence of the same with the demands raised and that the success achieved by stopping the supplies has caused an imitation effect and that the number of pickets and sabotage has increased.
The same sources of information detect certain sympathies within the protests with the extreme right but do not finish establishing clear links. Nor do they rule out that individuals from outside the transport sector are participating in the same, but since it is such a heterogeneous group, they say, it is impossible to pronounce categorically on the matter, at least for the moment.
The situation ends up clouding with the complaint of police passivity that the affected industries have privately transferred. elDiario.es revealed an email at noon on Friday that the previous night the head of the Federation of Food Industry had sent to a senior position in Agriculture in a tone of desperation. Manuel García de Quevedo informs his interlocutor of an "absolutely dramatic" situation and warned of the "shortage" of basic products that citizens will suffer in the coming days.
The letter, in a certain tone of familiarity with the general director of the Food Industry, desperately asks that the Security Forces repress the violent so that merchandise can leave the factories, while complaining about the passivity of the Civil Guard in these protests, something especially striking when compared to the use of force at other times and against other sectors.
The department of Grande-Marlaska exhibited data on police officers and civil guards employed in the tasks of controlling the protest, while at the beginning the seriousness of the violent events was downplayed. However, the scale and virulence of the attacks on the truck drivers who chose to continue working was evident in the official reports from each autonomous community and on Friday, the Minister of the Interior admitted that the protest was taking place with "unusual violence".
In Andalusia, one of the most affected autonomous communities, the Government delegate, Pedro Fernández, described the panorama: “They don't work not only because there is a picket line. The problem is that there are attacks in an isolated and dispersed manner throughout the Andalusian geography with such serious results as the breaking of the front windows in full circulation of the vehicle or the cutting of the brakes of the articulation of the semi-trailer with the tractor head, ”he assured. Fernández in an appearance, reports Europa Press.
Two people were arrested in Lucena (Córdoba) for throwing stones from a bridge at moving trucks. The Government delegate in Andalusia was emphatic: “There are many drivers who are not willing to operate because they know there is a risk to their physical integrity, and that is very serious. It is something that I do not remember having experienced with this intensity.”
A similar attack was suffered by another truck in Navarra, when driving on the N-121-A, when it was hit by a stone thrown from a bridge. In Asturias, a group of pickets threw nails at the access to the distribution center of the Alimerka chain. The León Civil Guard investigates a violent group made up of eleven people, as alleged perpetrators of the continued crimes of public disorder, damage and against Road Safety. They would have caused the breakage of the moon of a truck which was traveling in the direction of Madrid, after throwing several stones at it from an existing overpass on the A-6 motorway. In addition, they are accused of having acted in the municipality of Carucedo puncturing eleven wheels to three trucks that they forced to stop their circulation.
The high number of people who have only been identified is striking, 595, corresponding to allegedly involved in minor acts. In addition to the 12 detainees, there are another 42 investigated or denounced who were not arrested either. Interior numbered 120 convoys of escorted trucks.
