By Leonardo Benassatto
TORRE PACHECO, Spain (Reuters) -Spanish police have arrested eight people after three nights of clashes between far-right groups and North African migrants in a town in southeastern Spain, the government said on Monday.
In one of Spain’s worst such flare-ups of recent times, several dozen youths from far-right groups, some hooded, hurled glass bottles and objects at riot police in Torre Pacheco on Sunday night. Police fired rubber bullets to quell the unrest.
The trouble stemmed from an attack last week by unidentified assailants on an elderly man that left him injured and recovering at home.
Authorities said two of those arrested were involved in that assault though they were still looking for the main perpetrator.
The other six – five Spaniards and one person of North African origin – were arrested for assault, public disorder, hate crimes or damage to property, the Interior Ministry said.
Migrants, many of them second-generation, make up about a third of Torre Pacheco’s population of about 40,000.
The area around the town also hosts large numbers of migrants who work as day labourers in agriculture, one of the pillars of the economy in the Murcia region.
Speaking to radio station Cadena Ser, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska attributed the violence to anti-immigration rhetoric from far-right groups and political parties such as Vox, citing organisation and calls on social media.
Police intercepted more than 20 vehicles attempting to enter the town, with some occupants carrying sticks and extendable batons, he said.
“There are gatherings to resolve the issue (assault) for us. We don’t want those,” mayor Pedro Angel Roca told national broadcaster TVE.
Abdelali, a North African migrant who lives in Torre Pacheco and declined to give his surname, said he was afraid of riding his scooter for fear of being hit by bottles hurled by the rioters.
“We want peace. That’s what we want, we don’t want anything else,” he told Reuters on Sunday on a street in Torre Pacheco.
In 2000, violent anti-immigration protests broke out in the Almeria town of El Ejido in southern Spain after three Spanish citizens were killed by Moroccan migrants.
(Reporting by Violeta Sanchez Moura and Leonardo Benassatto; Additional reporting and writing by Emma Pinedo; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
