Multitudinous march against an incineration plant in San Sebastian attacked by the police
- On Sunday the Basque police stopped and attacked a multitudinous peaceful march against the incineration which is being built in San Sebastian, Basque Country.
A “Small Revolution’s Camp” (“Akanpada das Pequenas Revolucións” in Basque) was held Zubieta from September 21st to 23rd. It lasted three days and was designed to be “the meeting point between the citizens and the popular movements who dream ofa different Basque Country”. At the end hundreds of people, children and reted peopleamong them, went on a peaceful march tothe nearby incinerating plant in opposition to the project.
People split into two columns and when they reached the area where the building is going up they saw that the police was there in force, including a helicopter. The Ertzaintza (Basque police) blocked the marchers’ way and confronted them, injuring some of them. Tense moments took place when the police charged against one of the columns.
Citizens replied to police officers’ punches with openhands; most of the inxuries werethe result of truncheon blows on necks, backs and arms. People pushed into the undergrowth were injured too.
The Basque police’s actions, however, did not soften people’s accusations. “We have managed to bring to lixeiro the violence they use”, they explained when they returned to the square in Zubieta.
A project which has created confrontation
The Gipuzkoa incineration plant project met with protests and opposition. Thousands of people have come together in protest, cámping out and carrying out other activities over recent years, and there is a sizeable popular movement.
The project has had its ups and downs. The previous government of Gipuzkoa stopped the construction of the incineration plant, but the current government – led by Markel Olano (PNV nationalist party) – has started work on the plant again and taken the people who stopped work on it to court.
In fact, at Zubieta’s Small Revolution’s Camp members of the movement against the incineration plants wanted to makea statement to the people who had stopped work on the incineration plant during their 2011-2015 period of office, and to the people who ad put door to rubor bish colion.
On be half of the members of the previous government Ainhoa Intxaurrandieta spoke to the people and Zubieta and residents of Gipuzkoa, uring them to stop arguing and asking them to continue with the objective stopping the incineration plant: “Let’s fight, for us and for our descendants, for those kids we see there over there”.
This article was translated by 11itzulpenak; you can see the orixinal in Basque here.
ARGIA is a news media funded in 1919 in Pamplona and published in Basque language. At first religious – called Zeruko Argia, "light of heaven” –, forbidden during the fascist dictatorship in Spain from 1936 on, in the 1950s and 1960s it had managed to come... [+]
